! ;i i! : ; *l 



UNCEN50RED LETTERS 
OF A CANTEEN GIRL 




Class 



Book _ 'J&- 
GopyiightN Afe> 

COPYRkGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE 
T NCENSORED LETTERS 

OF A 

CANTEEN GIRL 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1920 



u 



Copyright, 1920 

BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 



w 



/ 



AUG 12 1920 
©CU576043 



TO 

PAT 

GATTS 

BRADY 

SNOW 

NEDDY 

BILL 

NICK 

HARRY 

JERRY 

and 

THE REST 

THIS BOOK 

is 
DEDICATED 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER I 

BOURMONT 

Company A i 

CHAPTER II 

GONCOURT 

The Doughboys 59 

CHAPTER III 

Rattentout 
The Front 87 

CHAPTER IV 

GONDRECOURT 

The Artillery 112 

CHAPTER V 

Abainville 
The Engineers 132 

CHAPTER VI 

Mauvages 
The Ordnance 167 

CHAPTER VII 

Verdun 
The French 214 

CHAPTER VIII 

CONFLANS 

Pioneers, M. P.'s and Others 237 



FOREWORD 

ToM. D. M. andM. H. M: 

My dears , 

These letters were all written for you; scratched down on odds 
and ends of writing paper, in a rare spare moment at the canteen; 
at night, at my billet, by candle-light; in the mornings, perched 
in front of Madame's fire-place with my toes tucked up on an orna- 
mental chaufrette foot-warmer. Why were they never sent? Simply 
because all letters mailed from France in those days, must of course 
pass under the eyes of the Censor. And as the Censor was likely to 
be a young man who sat opposite you at the mess-table, it meant 
that one mustn't say the things one could, and one couldn't say the 
things one would. So, after my first fortnight over there I decided 
to write my letters to you just as I would at home, putting down 
everything I saw and thought and did, quite brazenly and shame- 
lessly, and then keep them, — under lock and key if need be, — until 
I could give them to you in person. 

Written with the thought of you in my mind, these letters are 
first of all for you, and after that for whoever they may concern, 
being a true record of one girl's experience with the A. E. F. in 
France during the Great War. 



CHAPTER I 
BOURMONT 

Company A 

Bourmont, France, Nov. 24, 191 7. 

My village has red roofs. When I first came to France and saw 
that the villages were two kinds; those with red roofs and those with 
grey, I prayed le bon Dieu that mine should be a red-roofed one. 
Heaven was kind. Every little house in town is covered with rose- 
colored tiles. We came here yesterday from Paris. Our orders, 
which were delivered to us in great secrecy, read: Report to Mr. 
T , Divisional Secretary, Bourmont, Haute Marne; then fol- 
lowed a schedule of trains. That was all we knew except that some 
one told us that at Bourmont it had rained steadily all fall. 

"It cleared off for several hours once," concluded our informant. 
"But that was in the middle of the night when nobody was awake 
to see." 

Bourmont is a city set upon a hill, a hill that rises so sharply, 
so suddenly, that no motor vehicle is allowed to take the straight 
road up its side, but must follow the roundabout route at the back. 
Already we have heard tales about our hill; one of them being of a 
lad belonging to a company of engineers stationed here, who in a 
spendthrift mood, being disinclined to climb the hill one night after 
having dined at the cafe at its foot, bribed an old Frenchman with 
a fifty franc note to wheel him to the summit in a wheel-barrow. 
The Frenchman, for whose powers one must have great respect, 
achieved the feat eventually, the spectators agreeing the ride a bar- 
gain at the price. 

Two-thirds of the way up the hill on the steep street called gran- 
diosely Le Faubourg de France we have our billet, at the home of 



2 BOURMONT 

Monsieur and Madame Chaput. These are an adorable old couple; 
Madame a stately yet lovably gentle soul, Monsieur le Command- 
ant, a veteran of the Franco-Prussian War and member of the 
Legion oVHonneur. His wonderful old uniforms with their scarlet 
trousers and gold epaulets rub elbows with my whipcord in the 
wardrobe. 

Outside, the Maison Chaput resembles all the other houses 
which, built one adjoining another, present a solid grey plaster 
front on each side of the street. Like all the rest it has two doors, 
one opening into the house and one into the stable, and like every 
other house on the street the doors bear little boards with the 
billeting capacity of house and stable stenciled on them, so many 
Homines, so many Off. (for Officiers). It is told how one lad after 
walking the length of the street exclaimed; 

"Gee! Looks as if this were Dippyville. There's one or two off 
in every house!" 

Another boy gazing ruefully at the sign on his billet door, groaned; 

"Twelve homes! Why, there ain't one there!" 

One stable door nearby wears the legend in large scrawling let- 
ters; "Sherman was right." At first the owner was furious at this 
defacement of his property, but when someone explained the sig- 
nificance of the words to him, he became mollified and even took 
a pride in them. 

"Where are you stopping?" asks one boy of another. 

"Me? Oh, at the Hotel de Barn, four manure-heaps straight 
ahead and two to the right." 

The distinguishing feature of the Maison Chaput is the corner- 
stone. This shows as a white stone tablet at one side of the door. 
On it is carved "Laid by the hand of Emil Chaput, aged one year. 
Anno. 1842." It is the same Emil Chaput who with his tiny baby 
hand "laid" the corner-stone who is now our genial host. 

"It is droll," said Madame; "When strangers come to town they 
must always stop and read the corner-stone. They think the 
tablet is placed there to mark the birthplace of some famous man." 

The Gendarme and I, — Madame has christened G my com- 



COMPANY A 3 

panion the Gendarme on account of her vigorous brisk bearing, — 
live in the Salle des Assiettes, at least that is what I have named it, 
for the walls of the room which evidently in more pretentious days 
served as a salle a manger, are literally covered with the most 
beautiful old plates. Not being a connoisseur I don't know what 
their history is nor what might be their value; I only know that 
they are altogether lovely. The designs are delicious; flowers, in- 
sects, birds, little houses, Chinamen fishing in tiny boats, inter- 
spersed with spirited representations of the Gallic cock in rose and 
scarlet. I exclaimed over them to Madame, whereat Monsieur, 
candle in hand, bustled across the room and called on me to regard 
one in particular. 

"Qa coute," he averred proudly, " quar ante francs!" 

Since that moment I have been vaguely uneasy. What if, in a 
moment of exasperation, I should throw an ink-bottle at the Gen- 
darme's head, and — shatter a plate worth forty francs! 

Our room is the third one back. The front room is kitchen, din- 
ing and living room. The in-between room is quite bare of furni- 
ture, lined all about with panelled cupboards, and quite without 
light or air except that which filters in through the opened doors. 
In one of these cupboards Monsieur le Commandant spends his 
nights. When the hour for retiring comes, he opens a little panelled 
door and climbs into the hole in the wall thus revealed, leaving the 
door a crack open after him. When we pass through on our way 
to breakfast we hurry by the cupboard with averted faces. The 
family Chaput are not early risers. 

Already Madame has taken us into her warm heart. She will 
be our mother while we are in France, she tells us. Everything 
about us is of absorbing interest. When the Gendarme exhibited 
her wardrobe trunk, she was fairly overcome. 

"Ah, vive VAmerique" she cried, clapping her old hands, and, 
11 Vive V Amerique\" again. 

Bourmont, it seems, is army Divisional Headquarters. It is also 
headquarters for this division of the Y. There is a hut here, a ware- 
house, and headquarters offices, employing a personnel of sixteen 



4 BOURMONT , 

or seventeen. By tomorrow the Gendarme and I will know what 
our work is to be. 

Botjrmont, November 28. 

I have a canteen; the Gendarme, who has had some business 
training, is to work in the office. My canteen is in Saint Thiebault, 
the village next door. In the morning I go down the hill, past the 
grey houses built like steps on either side — some with odd pear 
trees, their branches trained gridiron-wise flat against the fronts, 
— over the river Meuse, here a sleepy little stream, to Saint Thie- 
bault. On the way I pass lads in olive drab with whom I exchange 
a smile and a hello, villagers bareheaded, in sabots, and poilus 
in what was once horizon blue. In Paris the uniforms were all so 
beautiful and bright, but here at Bourmont one sees the real hue, 
faded, discolored, muddy, worn. The soldiers, middle-aged men 
for the most part, slouch about, occupied with homely, simple 
tasks, chopping wood and drawing water. One feels there is some- 
thing painfully improper in the fact that they should be in uniform; 
they should, each and every one, be propped comfortably in front 
of their own hearthsides reading VEcho de Paris, in felt slippers while 
their wooden shoes rest on the sill outside. And yet these very 
ones, I think as I look at them, may be the defenders of Verdun, 
the victors of the Marne, the veterans of a hundred battles! 

The Bourmontese, who are proud and haughty folk, and call 
themselves a city though they number only a few hundred souls, 
look with disdain on the smaller village of Saint Thiebault, Saint 
Thiebault des Crapauds they call it, Saint Thiebault of the Toads. 
Approaching Saint Thiebault one sees two unmistakable signs of 
American occupancy; first, a large heap of empty tin cans and then 
the Stars and Stripes fluttering from a flag pole in the centre of the 
village. For Saint Thiebault is Regimental Headquarters and it is 
the boast of the old Colonel that wherever the regiment has gone 
that flag has gone too. Down the main street of the town I go, 
past the drinking fountain placarded; "Do not drink, good only for 
animals," but at which, nevertheless, the doughboys frequently 



COMPANY A 5 

refresh themselves, cheerfully risking death, not to mention a court- 
martial, in order to get a drink of unmedicated water; and out 
along the Rue Dieu until I turn off the highway just beyond the 
village wash-house. The wash-house, known to the French as la 
Fontaine, is a beautiful little building like a tiny stone chapel, 
with tall arched windows filled with iron grills. Through the 
centre runs a long oblong pool; at its brim the women kneel to do 
their scrubbing, handsome peasant wenches many of them, with 
fresh, high coloring. Often one sees a soldier leaning against the 
grill, engaged in some attempt at gallantry through the bars. 
Sometimes one even glimpses a form in olive drab kneeling by the 
side of one of the peasant girls, he scrubbing his sock,s, and she her 
stays, while she gives him a lesson in French and in laundering a 
la Franqaise. When the Americans first came to Saint Thiebault 
they had only a small-sized guard-house. Then came one historic 
pay-day when after months of penury the troops were paid. That 
night the accommodations at "the brig" proved inadequate and 
the wash-house had to be requisitioned for the over-flow. This 
was well enough until the lodgers fell to fighting among themselves 
and so fell headlong into the pool. Then such a hullabaloo broke 
loose that the whole camp turned out to see who had been mur- 
dered. 
Back of the wash-house lies a group of long French barracks, 

and here lives Company A of the Regiment, infantry and 

"regulars." Beyond the mess-hall is the hut, a French abri tent 
with double walls. Ducking under the fly, one finds oneself in a 
long rectangular canvas room, lighted by a dozen little isinglass 
windows. The room is filled with folding wooden chairs and long 
ink-stained tables over which are scattered writing materials, 
games and well-worn magazines. Opposite the door, at the far 
end, is the canteen counter, a shelf of books at one side, a victrola 
and a bulletin board, to which cartoons and clippings are tacked, 
on the other. Back of the counter on the wall, held in place by 
safety pins, are the hut's only decorations, four of the gorgeous 
French war posters brought with me from Paris. There are two 



6 BOURMONT 

stoves resembling unbrella-stands for heating in the main part of 
the hut and behind the counter another, about the size and shape 
of a man's derby hat, on which I must make my hot chocolate. For 
lights at night I am told that occasionally one can procure a few 
quarts of kerosene and then the lamps that stand underneath the 
counter are brought out and for a few days we shine; but usually 
we manage as our ancestors did with candle-light. Our candle- 
sticks form a quaint collection; some are real tin bourgeois brought 
from Paris, some strips of wood, some chewing-gum boxes, while 
others are empty bottles, "dead soldiers" as the boys call them. 
As for the bottles, I am particular about the sort that I employ 
and none of mine are labeled anything but Vittel Water. Others 
I observe are not so circumspect, — yesterday I chanced in at a can- 
teen in a neighboring village kept by a Y man; on a shelf three 
"dead soldier" candlesticks stood in a row and their labels read; 
Champagne, Cognac, Benedictine ! For the rest, the hut is equipped 
with a wheezy old piano, a set of parlor billiards, and a man secre- 
tary. It is invariably dense with smoke, part wood and part 
tobacco, and usually crowded with boys. 

The first night after the Chief had taken me over to call at my 
canteen and I had had one cursory glance at them, I came back 
feeling that my hut contained the roughest, toughest set of young 
ruffians that I had ever laid eyes on. The second night I came 
home and fairly cried myself to sleep over them — they seemed so 
young, so pitiful and so puzzled underneath their air of bravery, 
so far away from anything they really understood and everybody 
that was dear to them. It was Cummings in particular I think 
who did it for me. He owns to seventeen but I would put fifteen 
as an outside estimate. A mere boy who hasn't got his growth yet, 
with soft unformed features and a voice as shrill as a child's, I 
am sure he ran away from home to go to war just as another lad 
might have run away to see the circus. Although the regiment is 
a regular army organization, a large part of the men were raw re- 
cruits only last summer, a fact which causes the old-timers, whose 
service dates from Border days or before, no little regret. 



COMPANY A 7 

"This Man's Army ain't what it used to be," they complain; 
"it's getting too mixed." 

The "veterans" have a stock saying which they employ to put 
the youngsters in their places; 

"Call yourself a soldier do you? Why I've stood parade rest 
longer than you've been in the army ! " 

This is sometimes varied, when the speaker happens to be the 
tough sort, by; "Huh! I've put more time in the guard-house than 
you have in the army!" 

Tonight a boy came up to the counter and asked: " Goin' to serve 
hot chocolate tonight? " 

"Sure thing!" 

"Then I guess I won't go out and get drunk." 

It's going to be hot chocolate or die in that hut every night after 
this! 

Bourmont, November 31. 

I don't like my uniform. I don't like women in uniform any- 
way. I suppose it is because one is so used to the expression of a 
woman's personality in dress that when she dons regulation garb 
she seems to lose so much. And then to really carry off a uniform 
requires a flair, a dash, a swagger, and such are rarely feminine 
possessions. The consensus of opinion seems to bear me out. 

"Of course I think women in uniforms look very snappy, "con- 
fided a lad to me today; "but somehow they don't look like women 
tome!" 

"Pas joli" says Monsieur le Commandant severely, referring to 
my hat. "Pas jolil" But when I put on my old blue civilian coat 
he fairly goes into raptures. 

"Be-u-ti-ful!" he ejaculates. "Be-u-ti-ful! Toilette de mile. Pas 
toilette de Y. M. C. AJ" 

Besides the suit and cape I had made in Paris, they gave me two 
canteen aprons, aprons such as French working women wear, 
voluminous, beplaited, made in Mother Hubbard style. Now 
there is one point on which I am resolved. They can court martial 
me, they can send me home, or they can lead me out and shoot me 



8 BOURMONT 

at sunrise, but they cannot make me wear those aprons! What's 
more, the very first minute that I have to myself I'm going to cut 
them up and make them into canteen dish-cloths. 

Bourmont, December 3. ! 

This French money is the very plague; not because it is French 
but because it is so flimsy. It may perhaps measure up to the na- 
tional standards, but it fails utterly to meet American require- 
ments; the difference lying chiefly in the fact that the French don't 
shoot craps. It comes into the canteen in all stages of disintegra- 
tion. 

"She's kinder feeble. Will she pass?" inquires a lad anxiously. 

"With care maybe, and the help of a little sticking plaster," 
I reply; and getting out the roll of gummed paper kept handily in 
the cash-drawer, I proceed to patch up the tattered bill. 

"Guess this one must have been up to the front; it's all shot to 
pieces," another lad apologizes; then, at my casual references to 
shooting craps, grins guiltily. "But say now, ain't it the rottenest 
money you ever did see?" "The United States ought to teach these 
Frenchies how to make paper money," remarks a third; while 
still another adds; "When I'm to home I write to my girl on better 
paper than that." 

Sometimes the bills come in as a mere mass of crumpled tatters; 
then one must play picture-puzzle piecing it together. Sometimes 
they are beyond repair; for at times you will receive two halves of 
different notes pasted neatly together, or at other times one with 
the corner bearing an essential number lacking. The French banks 
refuse to pay a cent on their paper money unless it is just so. 

"I'm sorry, but that bill's no good," you will occasionally have 
to tell a boy. Usually he will grin cheerfully as he stuffs it back 
into his pocket. 

" Oh well, I'll pass it along in a crap game." 

Then too, the boys have no respect for foreign money and so 
handle it carelessly with an obvious contempt that is irritating 
to the French. 



COMPANY A 9 

"Tain't real money," they declare. 

The paper francs and half -francs they call "soap coupons." 

"Why, you might just as well be spendin' the label off a stick 
o' chewin' gum!" they jeer. 

Next to the paper money that comes to pieces in their fingers, 
the boys detest the big one and two cent coppers. Known to the 
navy as " bunker-plates," in the army they pass as "clackers." 
"You get a pocket-full o' them things and you think you've got 
some money, and all the time it ain't more than ten cents alto- 
gether," they grumble. 

"I can't be bothered carryin' that stuff around," they declare 
when I beg them to pay me in coppers. "I always throw 'em away 
or give 'em to the kids." A prejudice which greatly complicated 
the matter of making change until I had an inspiration. Now I 
give them their small change in boxes of matches or sticks of chew- 
ing gum. 

Then there is the annoyance of the local money. Since the war, 
the cities of France have taken to issuing their own paper francs 
and half-francs. We accept all this local money in the canteens 
and send it to Paris to be redeemed. But the French tradespeople 
in general refuse to honor these bills except in the city that issues 
them or its immediate vicinity. Many a puzzled dough-boy has 
been driven to indignant protest or even to "chucking the stuff 
away" in his exasperated disgust when told by the shop-keepers 
that his paper money was pas bon. But the grievance is not quite 
all on one side: no small amount of worthless Mexican money, 
brought over by Border veterans, I am told, was palmed off on 
shopkeepers at the port when the Americans first landed! 

In contrast to their disdain for this foreign currency the boys 
cherish to a degree that is half funny, half pathetic, any specimens 
of "real money" that they are lucky enough to possess. 

"Say, I had an American dollar bill in my hand the other day, — 
I felt just as if the old flag was waving over me!" And another lad; 
"Saw a U. S. Dollar bill today. Oh boy! but it looked a mile 
long to me!" 



io B0URM0NT 

If anyone displays an American greenback at the counter a little 
riot is sure to ensue. All the boys nearby crowd about, feast their 
eyes on it, touch it, pat it, kiss it even. 

"Lemme see!" " Ain't she a beauty?" "That's the real stuff!" 
"Say, how much will you sell her for?" 

Even the half-dollars, quarters and dimes are precious. 

"You don't get that one," they say as they pull a handful of 
change from their pockets. "That's my lucky piece. I'm savin 7 
that there little oP nickel to spend on Broadway." 

French money, Belgian money, Swiss money, English money, 
Spanish money, Italian money, Greek money, Canadian money, 
Luxembourg money, Indo-Chinese money, money from Argentine 
Republic, and yesterday a German mark even, all come across the 
counter and go into the till without comment. But when any 
American money comes in I always feel badly over it. For, be it 
a crisp five dollar bill, an eagle quarter or only a buffalo nickel 
I know it signifies just one thing, — bankruptcy. 

Bourmont, December 7. 

To be a corporal in the Ninth Infantry, it is said, a man must be 
able to speak eight languages, one for each soldier in his squad. The 
same could be said with almost equal truth of our regiment. I 
don't know whether it is this mixture of many nationalities that 
gives my family its flavour; be that as it may, Company A has 
more color, more character, more individuality to the square inch 
than I had dreamed any such group could possess. And they are 
so funny, so engaging in their infinite variety and their child-like 
naivete! 

First there are Gatts and Maggioni; Gatts, lean, tall, honest- 
eyed, with a grin that won't come off and a quaint streak of humour, 
— Gatts who looks pure Yankee, but is, if the truth were told, 
three-quarters German, — Gatts who hangs about my counter 
hour after hour; and by his side sticks little Maggioni, who told 
the recruiting officer that he was seventeen but whose head just 
tops the canteen shelf, and who looks, with his pink cheeks and his 



COMPANY A ii 

great dark eyes, like nothing in the world but an Italian cupid in 
the sulks. The two have struck up the oddest comradeship. 

"Me an' Gatts, we're goin 'to stick side by side," explains Mag- 
gioni, " an' if I see a crowd o' Germans pilin' onto him, why I'll 
just go right after 'em, an' if too many of 'em come for me ter 
oncet, why Gatts here, he'll just lay right into 'em." 

And Gatts nods, looking down at Maggioni with a parent's 
indulgent eye. 

"He thinks he's a tough guy for sich a little feller," he comments 
reflectively; "but he's the only one in the regiment that knows it." 

"You all think I'm mighty little!" snaps the cupid. "When I 
joined at Syracuse everybody said to me 'Baby, where'd you leave 
your cradle? ' But lemme tell you, I've growed since I've been in 
the army!" 

"Waal I do believe there's one part of him that's growed;" 
Gatts is very solemn. 

"What's that?" I ask. 

"His feet." 

Private Gatts has promised me one of the Kaiser's ears! 

Then there is Brady, "Devil Brady" the little black Irish coal- 
miner from Oklahoma, who spends his days trying to get put in 
the guard-house, so he won't have to drill. 

"I'm plumb disgusted," he confided to me today. "I never 
worked so hard in my life as I did the other night gettin' drunk, 
an' then the guard was so much drunker than I was, I had to carry 
him to the guard-house. I thought sure they'd give me thirty days 
at least, but they only kept me twenty-four hours and then out!" 

"Hard luck," I sympathized. 

"I just knew how it would be," he mourned. "It was Friday 
the thirteenth when I joined the army; there were just thirteen of 
us fellers, and the thirteenth was a nigger." 

He tells me the most wonderful yarns about the miners and their 
pet rats, about explosions and disasters and rescue parties. Last 
night he told me the story of one mine-horror that will stick in my 
memory. 



12 BOURMONT 

"And we shoveled the last three men and a mule into one bag," 
he finished. 

Now and then I catch a glimpse of Jenicho the Russian giant, 
but he is very shy. A huge lumbering fellow, sluggish, and seem- 
ingly stupid, with little pig eyes that are quite lost to sight when he 
smiles, Jenicho is the butt of the Company. When he joined the 
regiment last summer, they tell me, he knew no word of English. 
The first phrase that he acquired was; " You no bodder me." For 
the boys can't resist the temptation to plague Jenicho, and though 
his strength is such that if he once should get his hands on his 
tormentors he could break them into bits, he is so slow withal that 
they always can elude him. Not long ago Jenicho was walking 
post one night when the Officer of the Day hailed him and an- 
nounced himself. To which Jenicho lustily responded; "Me no 
give damn. Me walk post, gun loaded, bay'net fixed. You no 
bodder me. Me shoot!" And the Officer of the Day discreetly 
walked on. 

Then there is little Philip R. who plays our decrepit old piano 
quite brilliantly by ear, and who is, he tells me, half Greek and 
half Egyptian. Philip R. is the pet of a French family in one of the 
neighboring villages. He stopped at a house to ask for a drink of 
water when out walking one day. Madame asked him in, pressed 
him to stay to supper. The family made much of him, and all 
because forsooth he was the first "American" they had ever seen. 
Since then he has been a constant welcome visitor. 

There is St. Mary too. If you can conceive of a cherub eating 
watermelon you have a perfect picture of St. Mary. St. Mary 
converses entirely in words of one syllable and very few at that. 
He makes smiles serve for speech. St. Mary loses everything he 
owns; not long ago he lost his overcoat, now he has lost his bayonet. 
Yet St. Mary is the best natured boy in the company; he needs to 
be. When St. Mary helps me stir the chocolate it seems as if half 
the company fined up on the other side of the counter to shout; 
"St. Mary! Take your dirty hands out er that there chocolate!" 
and St. Mary never says a word but grins until his eyes are nothing 



COMPANY A 13 

but little slits and ducks his head until only the curls on top are 
visible. 

"St. Mary, he's kind o' simple," explains Private Gatts. "But 
there ain't anybody in camp that's got a better heart." 

And there is Bruno, Angelo Bruno, a little grinning goblin of a 
man, but strong, they say, as a gorilla. Bruno gives the non-coms 
no end of trouble; he's a "tough nut to manage." Whenever he is 
told to do anything that does not suit his tastes, he merely shrugs 
his shoulders, " No capish," and that's the end of it. The other day 
while on guard he was interrogated by the Officer of the Day. 

"What's your name?" 

"Bruno." 

"What are your general orders?" 

"Angelo." 

The Officer gasped, thought he would try again. "What are 
your special orders? " 

Bruno saw a light. "They're ina my pock!" 

When I first came to Saint Thiebault I was puzzled by the silver 
half-francs in my cash drawer which were bent in the middle, 
some of them so far as almost to form a right-angle. Then the 
boys explained. Bruno was once a strong man in a circus side- 
show. He did things with his teeth. The crooked half-francs were 
the results of his exhibiting his prowess to the boys. So now when 
damaged half -francs appear I know that our little Angelo has been 
trying his teeth again. At present our social intercourse with 
Bruno is limited. He is serving thirty days in the guard-house. 
But every day or two he slips into the hut to do his shopping, the 
kind-hearted guard standing at the door, as he does so, a sheepish 
look on his face. If there is one military duty which the dough- 
boy hates above all others, it is this job of "chasing prisoners," 
and when you meet a file of guard-house habitues escorted by a 
rifle in the rear, it is invariably the guard, and not the prisoners, 
who looks the culprit! The interest of Bruno's visits lies largely 
in seeing what is his latest acquisition in the way of jewelry. For 
Bruno has a pretty taste for finery and enlivens the dull evenings 



i 4 BOURMONT 

of his captivity by winning away the ornaments of his fellow 
prisoners. Already he has come into the canteen decked out with 
seven large rings and a fat watch and chain. Today he appeared 
with his latest prize, a pair of gold-rimmed eye glasses. They are 
hideously unbecoming, they pinch his nose so that it hurts, more- 
over he can't more than half see out of them, and yet it is quite 
evident those eyeglasses are the pride of his heart. 

Last week our Secretary conceived a big idea. He would edu- 
cate A Company. He would teach them to read, write and speak 
English. He started a class. On the first night there was a large 
crowd, eager and interested; the second night there were six, the 
pupils when sought out complaining they were " tired" or "busy;" 
the third night there was Saint Mary who made one; the fourth 
night the class died an easy death. I am afraid Company A is 
going to continue uneducated. As Brady said: 

"There were just two things I learned in school; one was to throw 
a spit ball, the other was to bend a pin convenient for somebody 
to sit on." And it looks as if it would have to go at that. 

"Why, those birds don't even understand their own names," 
complain the officers; "except on pay-day, and then they'll answer 
no matter how you pronounce them." 

Bourmont, December q. 

There is something queer about me. I don't mind the mud, I 
don't mind the rain, I don't mind the hill, I don't even mind the 
mess. Of course I admit that the food isn't quite what one is 
used to, and the surroundings are a trifle unsavoury, but it is, 
after all, so much better than the state of semi-starvation that I 
was led to half anticipate, that I for one am quite content. 

Our mess is held at the house of an old couple who live a little 
way above our billet on the hill. The house was differentiated from 
the others in the row by a spindling and discouraged tree which 
stood in a green tub outside; as this was the only tree in front of a 
house on the whole street it has always been easy to pick out our 
otherwise undistinguished entrance. Last night however, the 



COMPANY A IS 

weather waxing colder, the tree moved indoors. This morning the 
whole Y. personnel wandered distractedly up and down the hill 
trying to identify the mess-house door, until some kindly villagers, 
sensing the situation, came out on their front steps and pointed us 
to the place. 

The house, like most of the village dwellings, consists, down- 
stairs, of just two rooms. In the front room the family cooks, 
eats and spends its days. In the back room the family sleeps, and 
here we have our mess. The drawback of this arrangement is 
that one has to pass through the kitchen in order to reach the dining- 
room and this is likely to spoil one's pleasure in the meal that 
follows. As for me, I go on the principle that what one doesn't 
know won't take one's appetite away, and so hurry through the 
kitchen with one eye shut and the other fixed on the door ahead 
of me. 

Said my right-hand neighbor to my left-hand neighbor at supper 
the other day, as he offered him the piece de resistance of the meal: 

"You aren't taking rice tonight? " 

"Thanks no. Saw the old lady picking 'em out this noon." 

" That's nothing. I saw the old man picking 'em out of the beans 
yesterday." 

But why should people come to war if they are going to be so 
squeamish? 

A few days ago one rash soul among us conceived a hankering 
for salad. She went to Madame and, being ignorant of the French 
word, demanded simply. 

"Avez-vous lettice?" 

Madame shook her head uncomprehending, but finally as the 
words were repeated a fight dawned. 

"Ah ouij oni, ouiV 

She turned and hurried upstairs, descending triumphantly a 
moment later with a large bundle of old letters! In just what form 
she expected us to have them served I have not yet been able to 
ascertain. 

The mess-room is so crowded that to reach a seat often requires 



16 BOURMONT 

considerable manceuvering. In one comer stands an ancient dress- 
maker's dummy — by popular vote awarded as sweetheart to the 
most bashful man at table; in the corner opposite is the bed of 
Madame and Monsieur. The men who get up for early breakfast, 
swallow their bread and jam and coffee with Monsieur watching 
from his couch of ease. Today Madame was indisposed and when 
we came to supper we found that she had retired already. All 
through the meal she lay there, under the red feather-bed, looking 
like a dingy, weazened old corpse, staring at the ceiling, her mouth 
wide open. 

For the last few days we have had a visiting clergyman with us. 
To all appearances a meek and long-suffering little man, he has been 
giving special revivalistic discourses at the huts and eating at our 
mess. This morning he was asked to say grace. In the middle of a 
long and earnest exhortation I was startled to hear these words: 
"Oh Lord, Thou knowest we are apt to grow lean and to starve in 
Thy service!" I fairly had to stuff one of the one franc canteen 
handkerchiefs, which serve as napkins at the mess, into my mouth 
to keep from laughing. 



Bourmont, December 12. 

In Paris a man who lectured to us said : " Get the fellows who have 
influence with you, and you can swing the crowd." Sometimes 
I think that if Pat were our enemy instead of our friend we might 
almost as well shut up the hut. For Pat the sharp-shooter, Pat the 
dare-devil, Pat, who in company phrase "has Harry Lauder and 
George Cohen stopped in a hundred places," Pat the happy-go- 
lucky adventurer is one of the leading spirits in Company A. He 
has served, it seems, already in the war with the Canadian army. 

"But how did you get out of it?" I asked. 

Whereupon Pat regaled me with a wonderful rigmarole involving 
an extraordinary case — his own — of shell-shock out of which I could 
make neither head nor tail. Later, from one of the Secretaries 
who had been at Saint Thiebault before I came, I learned the truth. 



COMPANY A 17 

When America had declared war, Pat had deserted from the Canad- 
ian in order to enlist in the American army. Pat had showed him a 
letter from one of his old-time friends; it ended: 

"Of course I wouldn't think of splitting on an old pal like you, 
Pat, but I do need twenty dollars like hell." 

"What did you do?" asked the Secretary. 

"Sure an' I sent him the money," grinned Pat. 

Shortly after I first became acquainted with him, Pat, who is 
naturally gallant, with a tongue inclined to blarney, extracted a 
promise from me. Some day, after the war, if we should happen to 
meet, say, strolling down Fifth Avenue, Pat "dressed in a nice 
blue serge suit" is going to "take me away from the other feller" 
and take me out to dinner. It was after solemly pledging my word 
to this agreement that I learned that Pat had formerly been a 
saloon keeper and had had an extensive police-court record. Im- 
mediately I began to hope that Pat would forget that post-war 
party, but not he. Instead, he is constantly reminding me of it, 
always before an audience, dwelling on it and elaborating it, until 
now I find it has grown from a mere dinner, to dinner, the theatre 
and a dance! 

Lithe, wiry, lean-faced with close-cropped hair, pale blue gimlet 
eyes and an almost unvarying expression of intense seriousness on 
his face, Pat, when present, is the life of the hut. Forever at his 
clowning, you would never dream from his demeanour that Pat's 
domestic affairs are in a state little short of catastrophic. His wife, 
according to her photograph a handsome, sullen, passionate type, 
half Mexican, ran away about a year ago, taking with her all his 
money that happened to be handy, together with his new auto- 
mobile. Encountering some of Pat's friends, she had explained 
her apparently care-free single state by telling them that Pat was 
dead. Now she has discovered that Pat is in France, she is all for 
reconciliation. She has written him a letter in which she addresses 
him as her dear husband about six times to each sheet, informing 
him that she needs money, and inquiring of him what he wished her 
to do with his clothes. 



18 BOURMONT 

"What did you answer?" I asked, for Pat, who must always 
share his correspondence, had shown me the letter. 

"I told her," grinned Pat, "she cu'd keep the clothes and maybe 
she'd find another man to fit 'em." 

But there is another and more serious side to the matter. It 
seems that the lady in the case has written to the Captain of A 
Company, requesting him to forward a large proportion of Pat's 
pay to his deserving and indigent wife. Whether or not this will 
be done is still uncertain. Pat refuses to discuss the possibilities, 
but from the glint in his eyes I have a premonition that if next pay 
day Pat finds any considerable deduction made from his pay, that 
that night one wild Irishman will run amuck in Saint Thiebault. 

Occasionally in the midst of Pat's racy discourses I overhear 
things not meant for my ears, such as his remarking how in 
Rochester once he "went on a seven day's pickle in company with 
a female dreadnut." But usually he is very careful to only "pull 
gentle stuff" in my hearing. The other day he delivered himself 
of a wonderful dissertation on the deceitfulness of pious people, 
ending with this gem; 

"So whenever I see one of these guys comin' towards me with a 
gold crown on his bean, looking' as if he couldn't sin if he had to, 
why I nip tight on to my pocket-book and I cross to the other side 
of the street!" 

To-day Pat came into the canteen with a newspaper clipping 
and a letter to show me. The letter was from the Chief of Police of 

K. , one of the many cities in which Pat has resided during his 

short but crowded life, the clipping from the K Daily Sheet. 

The clipping was comprised of a letter which Pat had written to 
the Chief of Police giving in humorous phrase his version of life in 
France and an accompanying paragraph stating that though the 
writer had given the police force no little anxiety during his resi- 
dence in K , still he had been in spite of all, a good-hearted 

and likable rascal, and now that he had gone to war for his coun- 
try, bygones should be bygones and K must be proud of him. 

The letter from the Chief was in much the same vein. 



COMPANY A 19 

"Yes," ruminated Pat; "I kept the old feller pretty busy, though 
me an' him were friends just the same. But it sure would get the 
old man's goat, just after he'd had me up and fined me, to come 
home and see me settin' at his dinner-table alongside of his pretty 
daughter." 

Bourmont, December 14. 

Because it took too much time right in the most important part 
of the day to climb Bourmont Hill for mess at night, I have ar- 
ranged to take my suppers with two little old ladies here in Saint 
Thiebault. The suppers are to consist of a bowl of cocoa and a slice 
of bread with jam. The little ladies supply the bread and milk for 
the cocoa and I supply the rest, paying them one franc a day. 

At half-past five I put on my things, light my little candle- 
lantern and set forth. The boys, coming in after mess, will be 
crowding the hut; a chorus of anxious voices queries. 

"You're comin' back sure, ain't you?" 

And, "What time is that hot chocolate goin' to be ready?" 

I pick my way down the slippery duck-boards to the highway. 
Trudging along the muddy road, friendly voices hail me from the 
dark. I am known by the little light I carry. At number two 
Rue Dieu I rap and enter, trying desperately to leave some of the 
mud from my boots on the door-step, for in this land of wooden 
shoes scrapers are as unknown as they are unnecessary. Once 
inside I have to fairly strain my eyes in order to be able to see any- 
thing, for all the light in the room is supplied by the embers on the 
hearth and one tiny gasolene lamp with a flame not much bigger 
than the point of a lead pencil. Kerosene is unobtainable for civilian 
use; the price of candles is prohibitive. 

"C'est la guerre. Cest la inisere" say the little old ladies. "One 
must sit in the dark — "C'est triste comme qa." 

My candle doubles the illumination, yet in spite of that, so 
strong is the instinct for economy, they will not rest easy until they 
have blown it out. 

The little old ladies are cousins. The elder of the two, "Ma- 



20 B0URM0NT 

dame," is lame and has snow-white hair. She sits by the fire always 
in the self -same spot. The younger, "Mademoiselle," is a tiny 
dwarfish creature with a back that is not quite straight. Over her 
dark dress she wears a jaunty little scarlet apron sewn with black 
polka dots. I am grateful for that apron; it makes the one bit of 
color in the sombre room. 

I sit in front of the fire at the round table and sip my chocolate. 
The table has an oil-cloth cover on which is printed a map of 
France, so as I eat my supper I can take a lesson in geography. 
It is a pre-war tablecloth I fancy; over at one edge shows a slice 
of Germany. The little old ladies point to that side of the table 
with scorn, "Les sales Bodies sont la!" they explain. 

I wonder that it doesn't give them heart-burn to look down and 
see the captive and devastated districts of France lying beneath 
their tea cups. Think of setting your salt-cellar on the city of 
Lille or your mustard pot on the sacred citadel of Verdun! 

As I sup I endeavour to converse politely, but as my French 
is little more than camouflage, this is a dubious proceeding. 
Whenever I prove particularly stupid, out of the corner of my eye 
I catch Madame shaking her old head at Mademoiselle despair- 
ingly. 

"Elle ne comprend pas!" she murmurs sotto voce, pityingly; 
"elle ne comprend pas! " 

At odd times they turn an honest penny by doing a little sewing 
for the villagers. But life is very difficult these days: the prices 
of everything have gone so high. Why, wooden shoes that cost 
five francs before the war now fetch fifteen ! 

Tonight I noticed an item in a Parisian Journal lying by my 
plate. It was to the effect that at the Madeleine that day Mile. 
X had married Lieut. Z., a veteran of the war who had lost both 
arms and both legs. I showed it to the little ladies. 

"Ah out!" sighed Mademoiselle with a shiver. "Elle a beau- 
coup de courage, celle-la!" 

And Madame shook her white head and echoed. "Oui, elle a 
beaucoup de courage!" 



COMPANY A 21 

Upstairs an American officer is billeted. I fancy his presence 
supplies a certain dash of romance to the little old ladies' lives. 
The Americans are nice, they say, and make little noise in the 
village; when the Russians were here it was different. 

"It will be lonely when the Americans are gone," sighs Madem- 
oiselle. "The houses will seem empty." 



Bourmont, December 18. 

Yesterday I explored the top of Bourmont Hill. It is here that 
the Quality Folk live, and here are some stately old houses with 
beautiful carved doorways and even an occasional gargoyle. Here 
too the general commanding the Division lives, and I have often 
observed with glee corpulent colonels and rotund majors puffing 
and blowing and growing red in the face as they climbed the hill to 
Headquarters. At the top of the hill there are two churches. 
Some two weeks ago, it is whispered, a spy was caught signaling 
from the tower of Notre Dame. His signals, it is said, were flashed 
to another spy stationed on the hills to the east, who in turn sent 
the messages on to the lines. The Cure* of Notre Dame is being 
held under suspicion of complicity. 

From Notre Dame an avenue bordered by magnificent old trees 
sweeps around to the Calvary, a tall wooden cross surmounting a 
curious structure of rough stone, ringed about with shallow steps — 
the Mecca of many pilgrimages. Beyond the Calvary one comes 
to the Mystery of Bourmont. A faded sign declares Defense d J entree, 
but one looks the other way and slips by. For once past the gate 
you are in an atmosphere of enchantment. No one seems to know 
just what it is, nor how it came about; I can get no intelligent ex- 
planation from Madame or Monsieur. To me it seems like the for- 
gotten playground of an old mad king in some fantastic legend. 
For here among the trees are stone stairs, walls and terraces, and, 
cut in the curiously cleft rocks, are niches and tunnelled passage- 
ways, all mantled over now with green moss and ivy, the whole 
making one think of a dream garden out of Maeterlinck. 



22 BOURMONT 

Coming down Bourmont Hill afterwards I was startled by the 
beating of a drum; looking back I saw a woman, bare-headed, her 
blue apron fluttering in the wind, descending the street after me; 
from her shoulders was slung the drum which she was beating with a 
martial vim. It was the town-crier, le tambour as the French put 
it. Arrived at an appropriate spot, she stopped, pulled out a paper, 
cried "AvisI" and began to read in a rapid high official monotone. 
The wash-house was to be closed between two and four o'clock the 
following afternoon on account of the new water system the Amer- 
icans were installing. Certain requisitions of grain were to be 
levied. . . . The villagers were notified to call at the Mayory 
for their bread cards, without which, after such a date, no bread 
could be obtained. . . . One or two women came to the doors of 
the houses and listened. She took no notice of them. The reading 
over, she rolled the paper up with a quick decisive gesture, and re- 
sumed her march, the sharp rub-a-dub-dub of her drum pursuing 
me all the way to Saint Thiebault. 

Of late the air has become fairly vibrant with disquieting rum- 
ours: one does not know what to believe, what to reject. 

The Germans are massing for a gigantic drive on Nancy. In 
three weeks, some say, the offensive is to begin; three days, say 
others. Nancy is to be another Verdun. If they break through 
they will pass this way. The American troops are being withdrawn 
from this neighborhood: any day the order may come for us to 
leave. At Paris the political situation is dark. Some people even 
fear a popular uprising against the government. I hinted at this 
to Monsieur, he shook his old head hopelessly. But yes, things 
were in a bad way. Now if France only had Veelson at her head! 
France and Veelson! His gesture indicated the grandeur of such a 
contingency. As it was, France lacked a leader. And under- 
neath all this runs another rumour, still darker, still more dis- 
quieting. The French, the gallant French, they say, are "laying 
down." They are ready to make peace at any price. They are 
played out, sick to death of it all! 

"Forty- two months in the trenches!" cried a sergeant en per- 



COMPANY A 23 

mission last night; "It is enough! I am through. Let the Ameri- 
cans do it!" 

And this feeling, they tell us, is wide-spread. The people see 
our soldiers day after day, in the training camps, inactive. " What 
are they here for?" they are asking. "Why don't they fight? 
Are they going to wait until it is all over?" 

Will our soldiers, half-trained as they are, and a mere handful, 
be forced, to satisfy them, into the trenches? 

In the canteen I look inco the boys' faces and smile, but my heart 
turns sick within me. 

Bourmont, December 20. 

Such a strange, incredible thing has happened, — a thing that has 
upset all my preconceived ideas of human nature. It began with 
Malotzzi. Malotzzi as his name betrays is a "wop;" he is also the 
smallest fellow in the company which contains many small men. 
Nor is he only small, but with his thin olive-tinted face and his 
slender body, he looks so delicate, so ethereal that you feel a breath 
of wind might fairly blow him away. To the company he is "a 
good kid, quiet, never makes any trouble." To me he has always 
seemed an elfin, changeling creature, a strayed pixie, whose imp- 
ishness has turned to gentleness. Child of the tenements that he 
is, he is possessed of the most exquisite old-fashioned courtesy that 
I have ever yet encountered; and he has the starriest eyes of any 
mortal born. 

Not long ago he came to the counter to show me a postcard from 
his sweetheart. It had an ugly picture of a red brick city block 
upon it, and the message scrawled in an unformed hand beneath 
contained little except the simple declaration that when he came 
home she would go with him to the photographer's over the candy 
store at the corner and they would have their pictures taken to- 
gether. Yet no flaming and lyric love-letter could have rendered 
him more naively proud. Malotzzi with a sweetheart! It was 
absurd, he was nothing but a child! I can well believe that 
Malotzzi wouldn't make a very "snappy" soldier. 



24 BOURMONT 

This afternoon when the company was out for drill, a certain 
Second Lieutenant discovered that Malotzzi hadn't got his pack 
rolled up right. This was not the first time he had offended in 
this manner. The Lieutenant had warned him. He was angry. He 
took Malotzzi over to the bath-house, stripped off his blouse, 
tied his hands so he couldn't struggle, and beat him with a gun- 
strap until he fainted. 

The story flashed around the camp. When I came back from 
supper I found the boys at white-heat with indignation. They 
fairly seethed with anger. I think if the Lieutenant had happened 
in, they might have killed him. Presently a little crowd carried 
Malotzzi in. They rolled back his sleeves and showed me the great 
purple welts upon his arms. His back was all like that, they said. 
He had to be held up in order to keep his feet. 

"You had better take him to the hospital," I told them. 

They carried him out again. He is at the hospital now, where 
he is likely to stay for some time. His lungs are delicate and the 
beating caused congestion. The medical officer made a report 
and the Lieutenant has been placed under arrest. 

I have never met the Lieutenant to know him, but curiously, 
the Secretary, who messes with the officers, asserts that of all 
the men there this Lieutenant has always appeared as the most 
clean-spoken, the most cultured, the most gentlemanly. And the 
boys have always considered him a very decent sort. The whole 
thing is absolutely and blankly incomprehensible to me. There 
is one explanation the boys offer; which is that the Lieutenant, 
having a yellow streak, has lost his nerve at the prospect of going 
to the front, and has done this as a desperate expedient, in the 
hope of being dishonorably discharged. The only other possible 
explanation which I can come upon is that the Lieutenant has a 
German name. 

Bourmont, December 23. 
The burning question that is on every lip: Will the Christmas 
turkeys come? 



COMPANY A 25 

We had been promised turkey. What's more I had been prom- 
ised some of that turkey too, at Company A's mess table. Now 
uncertainty holds us in torment. Every sort of a rumor is rife. 
Some darkly insinuate that neighboring organizations have side- 
tracked those turkeys. Others declare that the turkeys, having 
been smuggled in by night, are now actually in camp among us. 

''Huh!" snorts my friend the Tall Kentuckian. " Funny tur- 
keys they have in this army! I done heard those turkeys had 
four legs and a pair of horns!" 

Of course Christmas won't be Christmas without the turkeys, 
but anyway we have done our best to bring Christmas into the 
hut. The question of Christmas trees was taken up in the Bour- 
mont office some days ago. An application was made to the Mayor; 
the Mayor referred the matter to the representative of the Bureau 
of Forestry. The Bureau of Forestry proved to be a good scout. 
He ruminated a while, "Mademoiselle," said he, "this matter is 
so tied up with red tape, that if one were to unwind it all, it would 
be New Year's before you got your tree. My advice is that you 
select your tree, wait until after dark, then go out, cut it down 
close to the ground, and cover the place carefully with snow." 

Tonight when the subject of Christmas trees came up in the 
canteen I repeated this anecdote to the boys. It was then growing 
dusky. Several boys immediately disappeared. In an hour they 
were back again, dragging not one, but two beautiful hemlocks. 
We set up the more perfect one, and cut the other up for trim- 
mings. With flags, paper festoons, Japanese lanterns, tinsel which 
the French call " angel's hair," and tree ornaments the hut was 
transformed in a twinkling as if by magic. Now it is no longer a 
muddy-floored tent, but a green bower threaded with myriad bits 
of bright color, and I have really never seen anything of the sort 
that was any prettier. 

Yesterday several cases of free tobacco from the Sun Tobacco 
Fund arrived in camp. The boys in the orderly room opened the 
cases last night and hunted through and through them, trying to 
find packages which bore the names of unmarried lady donors. 



26 BOURMONT 

Unfortunately the Misses who contributed were few and far be- 
tween, but hope dies hard. 

"Say, mightn't Asa be a girl?" the lads are asking me eagerly 
today. 

"Lucien ain't a man's name, is it?" 

Enclosed in each package is a postal-card on which one may, 
if so inclined, return thanks to the giver. The boys who are tak- 
ing the trouble to write are doing it frankly with the hope that 
this may encourage the recipient to repetition. How to tactfully 
suggest this without seeming greedy is a problem whose delicacy 
proves difficult. 

"You tell me how to say it," they tease. 

"Say, won't you write it for me, please ma'am?" 

I saw one postal-card accomplished after an evening of con- 
centrated effort; "Your precious and admired gift," it began. 

Already Santa Claus in the person of Mr. Gatts has presented 
me with a beautiful white silk apron embroidered with large 
bunches of life-like violets. 

Bourmont, Christmas Day. 

Joyeux Noel! 

As I came in last night there was a great log burning on the 
hearth. 

"Cest la louche de Noel" said Madame and explained how it 
would burn all night, then Christmas morning she would take the 
little end that was left and put it away in the loft until the next 
Christmas: it would protect the house from lightning; it was a 
very ancient custom. 

Back in the Salle des Assiettes I found our table spread as for 
a little fete with a wonderful cake and a bottle tied up with a 
bouquet of chrysanthemums and long ribbon streamers of red white 
and blue. I was so innocent that I supposed at first that the 
chrysanthemums were in the bottle, an improvised vase, but Ma- 
dame quickly enlightened me: "Cest le vin blanc" she explained to 
my embarrassment. 



COMPANY A 27 

The Gendarme and I took counsel together as to how we could 
best express our feelings on this occasion toward the Family 
Chaput, the household having been increased over night by the ar- 
rival of the married daughter and her small boy and girl. After va- 
rious projects had been considered and abandoned, we finally took 
the little stand from our room, dressed it with evergreen and tinsel, 
then heaped it with nuts, candies, chocolate bars, and little jars 
of jam all from the canteen, together with a few small toys, and 
carried it in and placed it in front of the hearth. The family ap- 
peared delighted. We observed, however, that after the first toot, 
baby Max's whistle was swiftly and silently confiscated. Later 
when La Petite, the little maid-of-all-work who takes care of our 
rooms, came in, we had a few trinkets dug from the depths of our 
trunks to bestow on her. Later still I carried chocolates and con- 
fiture to my little old ladies of the Rue Dieu. 

This Christmas day I fancy will be long remembered by the 
inhabitants of this part of France; for in every one of the villages 
about, our soldiers have given the French children a Christmas 
tree. I went to see the tree at Saint Thiebault. The ancient 
church, its chill interior ablaze with light, was crowded with vil- 
lagers all dressed in their fete day best. The old people were just 
as excited and eager as the children; not one had ever seen a Christ- 
mas tree before. They stood on the pews in order to get a better 
view. The tree which was very large and beautiful stood just 
outside the altar rail. It bore a gift for every child in Saint Thie- 
bault. While the tree was slowly being unburdened of its load, 
the band-master's choir, high up in the choir-loft sang an accom- 
paniment. Some of the selections were of a sacred character, 
others frankly secular, such as Drink To Me Only With Thine 
Eyes; but as one of the choristers remarked; 

"As long as we sing them slow and solemn the Frenchies won't 
know the difference." 

After the Christmas tree I went around to the little local hos- 
pital to take some gifts to the patients. There were half a dozen 
of them lying on cots in the bare barracks room, a dreary set in a 



28 BOURMONT 

drearier setting. In one corner lay a boy who muttered incoher- 
ently. He had just been brought in, they told me, and was very ill: 
the doctors were puzzled to know what was the matter with him. 
I left some little gifts for him when he should be better. 

It was half -past four when I reached the hut. Suddenly it popped 
into my head that we ought to have a Santa Claus. At half-past 
six Santa walked in through the door. It was Pat in a big red 
nose, a red peaked cap, much white cotton-batting beard and whis- 
kers, rubber boots, the Chief's fur coat, covered over for the night 
with turkey-red bunting, and a fat pack slung over one shoulder. 
I had just dressed him in the mess hall, and for an impromptu 
Santa Claus, I flatter myself he was quite effective. The boys 
whooped. When they discovered who it was behind that nose, 
they yelped like terriers. 

"Ain't he the beauty! Oh you whiskers! Say Pat, kiss me 
quick!" 

We got Santa safely behind the counter and then opened the 
pack. It was full of foolish little things; tricks, puzzles, games, 
mottoes, whistles, tin trumpets, paper "hummers". The boys went 
wild. It was the musical instruments that made the hit. For two 
hours that hut shrieked pandemonium. Every last man in the 
company tootled and squawked as if his life depended on it, and 
every last one of them was tootling a different tune. 

"Cest des grands gosses!" Truly, as Madame Chaput says, 
they're nothing after all but so many big little boys. 

After the stuff was distributed the Secretary and I invited the 
boys to partake of hot chocolate and sandwiches. But to our 
disappointment they only took a languid interest in the treat. 
Instead of the five and six cups apiece which many often swallow, 
not one of them consumed more than a cup and three-quarters. 
Too late we realized; they had already gorged themselves on the 
contents of their Christmas boxes from home. 

Reports coming in from the village stated that one American 
Christmas custom had made a strong appeal to the feminine por- 
tion at least of the population. Quantities of mistletoe grow here- 



COMPANY A 29 

abouts. The French, although averring that it brings good-luck, 
consider it a pest and let it go at that. It took the American dough- 
boys to enlighten the Mademoiselles as to its Anglo-Saxon signif- 
icance. It would be curious, I have been thinking, if the adoption 
of this ancient privilege should prove one of the lasting evidences 
of the American troops in France! 

As I left the canteen I learned that the boy who had been so 
sick at the hospital was dead. 

Bourmont, December 26. 

Last night was a wild night in the barracks. This morning the 
hut was full of echoes of it. Company A indeed wore a jaded 
look. They had had very little sleep it was explained. And it 
was all on account of the Christmas hummers. 

"I ain't got nothin' against you people, but I shore don't think 
you gave A Company a square deal," remarked my friend the 
Tall Kentuckian as he lit his cigarette at the counter. 

"Why, didn't you like the present that Santa Claus brought 
you? " I teased. 

"Huh! I would shore have singed the ol' gentleman's whiskers 
for him last night if I could have caught him!" He went on to 
explain; "We'd just get settled down good to sleep when some guy 
or other would start up a-squawkin' on one of them things. An' 
Sergeant — , well he'd had just enough to make him fightin' mad, 
an' he shore would rare around that there barracks tryin' to find 
them fellers. Why, half the corporals in the outfit was marchin' up 
and down the place most all the night long, shyin' hob-nailed shoes 
in what they guessed was the direction of them noises." 

I began to discern what a night of terror it had been. 

"Yes suh!" declared the Kentuckian. "There was one feller 
with a hummer we couldn't get. He kept blowin' Tipperary. He 
must have blowed it for two hours steady, on an' off. I guess he 
had every last hob-nailed shoe in the hull barracks throwed at 
him." 

Nor is this all. It seems I have committed a ghastly faux pas. 



3 o BOURMONT 

I have gotten the Y. in dreadfully dutch with the officers. It 
is all along of the Christmas calendars. The Christmas calendars 
arrived at the canteen just the day before Christmas. They were 
designed to be sold to the boys for five cents a-piece in order that 
they might have something to send to the folks at home as a Christ- 
mas greeting. But since they reached us so very late the Secretary 
and I decided we didn't have the face to put them on sale. 

" Let's give them away," I suggested, and on his agreeing, laid 
them in heaps on the counter and invited the boys to help them- 
selves. The boys weren't bashful. They helped themselves with 
enthusiasm and zeal. They came back for more and more. For 
the rest of the day no one did a thing at the hut but sit at the tables 
and address envelopes. One boy, I learned later, sent off as many 
as thirty-five. I was awfully pleased to have the boys appreciate 
the calendars so. And I never once for a moment thought of the 
censors; but presently I heard from them. The company censors, 
two of the younger lieutenants, had been looking forward, it seems, 
to some leisurely care-free hours at Christmas. When the stacks 
of calendars started coming in they saw their holiday vanish 
into thin air, nay more, they saw themselves sitting up nights for 
weeks to come censoring those precious calendars. And they 
were swearing, raving mad. They were going to run the Y. out 
of the town! They were going to shut down the hut! Finally 
they compromised the matter with their consciences by censoring 
half and chucking the other half into the stove. But even then 
they couldn't stop fussing and fuming over it. Tonight just to 
top the matter off, we received a sharp reprimand from the Busi- 
ness Manager at Bourmont for being so extravagant as to give 
the calendars away, unauthorized. Was there ever such a tragedy 
of good intentions? 

Bourmont, December 27. 
Today we buried the lad who died on Christmas night. I had 
never seen a military funeral before and I had never dreamed 
that such a ceremony could be so thrillingly beautiful. 



COMPANY A 31 

The company formed at three o'clock in the road in front of 
the canteen, then filed slowly through the streets of the little 
grey age-old village. The band marching at the head of the pro- 
cession played the Marche Funebre of Chopin. After the band 
came the officers of the company and then the firing squad of 
eight sharp-shooters, followed by an ambulance carrying the boy's 
coffin covered with a great flag. Behind, marched the whole of 
Company A and after them crowded a throng of villagers. All 
the men in town, with the innate respect that the French have for 
death, stood uncovered as we passed, while many of the women 
watched with tears streaming down their faces. 

We passed through the village and down the road to the little 
grey-walled cemetery, ringed around with evergreens and now deep 
in freshly fallen snow. All about stretched virgin shining snow- 
fields and over them to the east rose Bourmont like a dream city, 
etched as delicately as by a silver-point against the soft dove- 
colored sky. 

The majestic phrases of the Catholic burial service rang out 
clearly on the frosty air: 

Eternal rest grant him, Lord, 

And let perpetual light shine upon him! 

The coffin with the great flag burning in blue and scarlet was 
lowered into the grave. Slowly, with perfect expression, a bugler 
blew the poignant, unforgettable notes of Taps. The rifles of the 
firing squad cracked sharply; three volleys, it was over. 

"Will they leave him there?" An old Frenchwoman asked one 
of the boys afterwards. 

" 'Till the war is over, then likely they will send him home." 

"But why? He won't be lonely here. There will always be 
some one to put flowers on his grave." 

Tonight I was talking to the Supply Sergeant about the lad. 

"I think he died of a broken heart as much as anything," he 
told me. "They wouldn't let his mother see him at the dock when 
we sailed. She came to say good-bye but it was against the rules. 
He never could get over that; he kept brooding all the time and 



32 BOURMONT 

fretting for her. I read some of her letters to him. They seemed 
more like a sweetheart's than a mother's." 

The doctors, however, diagnosed his disease as spinal menin- 
gitis. They have ordered the barracks in which he slept to be 
quarantined. Already a half a dozen boys in quarantine have 
taken to their beds, but this we hope is largely due to over-stimu- 
lated imaginations. Even if the disease doesn't spread, however, I 
am wondering what will become of ninety-seven lively boys bottled 
up for two weeks in one barracks. Already various ones have 
eluded the guard and come sneaking furtively into the canteen to 
buy their cigarettes and chocolates. Whenever one of these un- 
fortunates is recognized a regular howl goes up all over the hut. 

" Outside! You're one of the crumby ones!" they jeer, or; 
" Convict! Get back to your cell!" 



Bourmont, December 28. 
The worst of my job is playing dragon to the French children. 
In view of the fact that if allowed in the hut at all they swarm in, 
in such numbers as to fairly overrun it, and pester the boys with 
their insatiable appeals for "goom" and chocolate, it has seemed 
best to make a strict rule against their admission. (Besides which 
I don't approve of giving them gum, for in the face of anything 
one can do or say they will insist on swallowing it, which is, 
I'm sure, not at all good for their tummies!) But in spite of this 
prohibition the place holds an irresistible attraction for them. At 
night one can often see their faces pressed flat against the isin- 
glass windows as they peer inside; while chiefly on Saturday and 
Sunday afternoons they will slip slyly in, and then if the dragon 
isn't on the jump to explain to each and every one in her very best 
French, that she is so sorry but it really is forbidden, why in a 
twinkling the hut becomes full of them. And they are so pictur- 
esque, so appealing, so full of shy wonder at the gramaphone with 
the wheel that "marches by itself" that it is very hard to turn 
them out. 



COMPANY A 33 

Since Christmas I have been kept busy by a tiny tad of a raga- 
muffin with a funny round cropped black head and a face as sol- 
emnly expressionless as a little carved Buddha. He slips in among 
the tables and he is positively too small to be seen. The Christmas 
tree with its shining ornaments is his stealthy objective. In vain 
I explain matters politely to him; without a sound, without the 
hint of a flicker in his little beady black eyes, he turns and clumps 
out in his ridiculous sabots, only to presently slip in again. And 
now it seems he has lain low and sagaciously observed my habits; 
for returning to the hut after mess this noon, I met him trudging 
along the Rue Dieu, his eyes encountering mine blandly without 
embarrassment, his absurd little figure bulging all over with pur- 
loined Christmas tree ornaments. In the hut I found our poor 
tree stripped to a height of four feet from the floor of all its finery. 

These last few evenings the hut has been given over to writing 
Christmas thank-you letters home. The official writer of love 
letters for the company has been working overtime; not that his 
clients cannot write themselves, but because they feel he is more 
able to do justice to the subject. Every night now I see him sitting 
out in front of the counter, his Jewish profile bent low over the table 
as he covers sheet after sheet with his fine and fanciful hand-writ- 
ing, while next him perches anxiously the interested party, watch- 
ing developments and occasionally proffering a suggestion. When 
it is done they must bring it to me for my approval. 

" That's a real classy letter, ain't it? " the lover will query proudly 
and I assure him that it is indeed. 

"When she gets that, I bet she'll come across with that sweater 
she told me she was makin' for me, all right!" 

"Say do you think that ought to be good for a cartoon of cigar- 
ettes? " another one inquires. 

Of course there are many who, no matter what the effort, 
prefer to write their own. Sometimes when cleaning up the 
canteen tables I come upon specimens of such, first drafts dis- 
carded on account of blots. One such love letter, classic in its 
brevity, picked up the other day, ran: 



34 BOURMONT 

Dear Sweetheart, 

I am writing you a few interesting 
lines which I hope will be the same to you wishing you 
a merry Xmas and a happy New Year 

Your loving friend 

Pvt. 

Of late I have been moved to speculate wonderingly on the men- 
tal processes of the American public. I have been going through 
the stacks of magazines in the warehouse sent from the States for 
one cent per to provide amusement for the doughboys' leisure 
moments. Among the rest I found the Upholsterer's Monthly, 
The Hardware Dealer's Journal, The Mother's Magazine, Fancy 
Work and The Modern Needleworker. I showed some of these 
prizes to one of the boys; "Gee, but that's the kind of snappy stuff 
to send a feller over the top!" was his comment. That numbers 
of the Undertaker's Journal have also been discovered among the 
donations from home I have heard asserted on excellent authority, 
but as yet I have not personally come across any. 

Just as we were closing tonight, Pat came up to the counter, 
solemnly leaned across it: 

"Have you seen the new shoes they're issuin'? he demanded. 
"They've got pitchers on them so a feller can't see his own feet!" 

Botjrmont, January 2, 1918. 

Once a week our peripatetic movie-machine makes its appear- 
ance among us. Louis, the sixteen year old French operator, un- 
packs the big cases, sets up the apparatus, and, if our luck holds, 
we have a show. Owing to the short range of the little machine 
the screen must be hung in the middle of the hut. This means 
that half the audience must view the pictures from the back, the 
essential difference being that the lettering is then reversed; "The 
Jewish Picture Show," the boys call this. But then as half of us 
can't read anyway, why should we mind? 

The joy of the show lies in the audience. Just as soon as the 
lights are put out the fun begins: "Everbody watch their pocket- 



COMPANY A 35 

books!" goes up the shout and from that moment we are never 
still. 

The curly-headed heroine makes her coquettish entrance. 

"Ooo la la! Oooo la la!" rises the enthusiastic welcome. 

A bottle is displayed; "Cognac!" the yell shakes the roof. 

The neglected wife begins to waver in response to the tempter's 
wiles; "Now don't forget your general orders, little lady!" ad- 
monishes an earnest voice. 

Lovers indulge in a prolonged embrace; "Aw quit! Quit it! 
Yer make me home-sick!" goes up the agonized appeal. 

The enraptured lover stands registering ecstacy; "Hit him 
again, he's coming to!" comes the derisive shout. 

And so it goes. The actors aren't on the screen, they're in the 
house, and truly there isn't a dull moment on the programme! 

Last night, however, instead of the joyous chorus of running 
comment a subdued and decorous silence reigned, broken only by 
a few half-hearted sallies. What was the matter? I racked my 
brain to find the cause. All the joy had gone from the show. The 
evening was stale, flat and unprofitable. When the lights were lit 
again the mystery was immediately made plain. At one end of the 
counter stood an officer. I wonder if he dreamed what a spoil- 
sport he had been? 

Once a week also a lady comes from the Bourmont office to give 
us a French lesson; not that Company A betrays any burning 
desire to learn to parlez-vous, but just that it seems obviously the 
proper thing to do under the circumstances, so French they must 
be taught willy-nilly. There were two lessons to be sure in which 
they took a degree of interest; the lesson about buying and count- 
ing money, and the lesson about food and drink. But when they 
had once learned to ask the price of things and to understand 
the answer, and had learned the words for eggs, bread, butter, beer, 
ham, beefsteak, chicken and French fried potatoes, their interest 
lapsed until it became positive boredom. Of late it has seemed to 
me that it was only the boys with French blood that learned any- 
thing and they, of course, knew it all already. 



3 6 BOURMONT 

For entertainment Company A can upon occasion furnish its own 
show. This was demonstrated by an impromptu programme staged 
in the hut the other night; there's no use we have discovered in 
planning things beforehand, if one does, as sure as fate, all the 
star performers " catch guard" that day! Pat by request acted as 
stage-manager and master of ceremonies. To stimulate the artists 
we announced prizes. 

Private Dostal opened the programme; a large red-faced lad 
with a bland and simple cast of countenance, he is the comic bal- 
ladist of the company. His first contribution was a selection 
popularly known among us as Beside the dyirf boxcar, the empty 
hobo lay, a piece with a vast number of verses in which the dying 
hobo repents an ill-spent life, only, in the last line, to "jump 
up and hop the train." For an encore we had Papa Eating Noodle 
Soup which could best be described as a '"gleesome, gruesome" 
recitative, the chorus of each of numerous verses consisting of a 
realistic imitation of Papa partaking of the Soup. Mr. Gatts gave 
us a jig. Then Bruno who, as the boys say; "Could sing pretty 
good, only he don't sing nothin' but wop," favored us with Oh 
Maria, prefacing his performance with the earnest admonition, 
"No lafim! nobody!" and after that with an Italian folk dance 
in which he looked more like a grotesque little punchinello than 
ever. Our light-weight boxing champion then gave us Love's Old 
Sweet Song and the heavy-weight champion popularly known as 
Magulligan, together with Mr. Bruno rendered Bye low my Baby, 
antiphonal fashion. The last number was furnished by a poilu 
who had wandered in, in company with one of the boys. He sang 
a long dramatic ballad, entitled The Last Cuirassier, depicting 
some incident in the Franco-Prussian War. Just what the boys 
made of it I don't know, but to me it was intensely thrilling, not 
on account of the words for I couldn't catch them, but on account 
of the fervor, the imaginative sympathy, the martial spirit which 
that old fellow in his faded trench coat threw into his tones. 

When the show was over Pat stood up on the counter and an- 
nounced that as long as all the performances had been of such 



COMPANY A 37 

superlative merit, it was impossible for the judges to decide be- 
tween them. So we handed out a couple of packages of " smoking" 
to each one of the artists, and everybody was satisfied. 

Once too we had a party, an athletic stunt party. There were 
potato-races and sack-races, string-eating contests, three-legged and 
obstacle-races; but the sensational, the crowning event was, of 
course, the pie-race. The pies which were of French manufacture 
had only been arranged after difficulties: consulting the houlanghre 
at Bourmont I had discovered that the calendar now only allows 
two pie-days per week, Sunday and Wednesday; since the party 
was to be Friday, pie was unlawful, unless — and here the law, like 
all good laws allowed a loop-hole — unless the pie be made with 
commissary flour! The pie-race was the "dark horse" on the 
programme. Fearing that if the boys learned beforehand of the 
prospective pie not only would we be mobbed by would-be con- 
testants but also that their interest in the rest of the programme 
would suffer, we had kept the pie-race a profound secret. Smuggled 
in when the hut was empty those pies had reposed serenely under 
the counter all afternoon and contrary to my fears not a boy had 
sniffed them! When the proper moment came the pies were placed 
on a board in the middle of the floor, the contestants, of whom Pat 
was one, knelt with their hands tied behind them. At the word go! 
they fell to. The hut howled. Then it was discovered that Cor- 
poral G. laboured under a cruel handicap; his pie was a cherry pie 
and every cherry had a stone in it. Half-way through his pie, Pat, 
jerking one hand loose, seized a large piece, plastered it on the head 
of his opponent opposite ; the race ended in a riot. Strangely enough, 
when peace was restored not a trace of pie could be found any- 
where, — nowhere, that is, except in the back hair of the contestants. 

Bourmont, January 6. 

Now I know how the prince in the fairy tale felt when he was 

bidden to climb the mountain of glass. For Bourmont Hill is 

sheeted with ice, and it is fairly as much as one's life is worth to 

attempt to go up or down. Every morning I stand and look at 



3 8 BOURMONT 

that dizzying slide aghast, and wonder if I may possibly reach 
the foot alive; then assistance comes, sometimes in the shape of a 
French lad in sabots, sometimes as a stalwart doughboy with a 
sharp-pointed staff, and together the two of us go slipping, slither- 
ing down the hill-side. In the middle of the road yelling doughboys, 
seated on cakes of ice, whiz by at a mad rate of speed; long before 
they reach the bottom of the slope, the ice-cake splinters into bits, 
but the doughboy shoots on downward, sprawling, spinning like 
a top, while you hold your breath and gape to see that his neck 
isn't broken. For the French people all this supplies the sensation 
of a life- time; they crowd their front doors and their front yards 
laughing, shrieking warning or encouragement, as they watch the 
progress of the mad Americans up and down the hill. 

" If one could only have a movie of Bourmont Hill on a day like 
this! " sighs the Gendarme. 

The other day I encountered a sergeant of engineers on the hill- 
side. 

"You ought to have a sled, Little Girl," he told me. 

"Well why don't the engineers make me one?" I unthinkingly 
retorted. 

"Sure and they will!" he answered. 

Since then I have gone in terror. If the sergeant should have 
that sled made for me, as he likely will, why I shall have to use it. 
And as for starting down Bourmont Hill on a sled, I would just 
as soon attempt Niagara in a barrel. 

Ever since Christmas it has been cold, bitter cold. At the can- 
teen I wash my chocolate caps with the dishpan on the stove in 
order to keep the water fluid; hanging the dish-cloth up to dry 
at the corner of the counter, in a few minutes I find it stiff with ice. 
At night the ink-bottles freeze and then burst, spreading black 
ruin all around them. What to do with the still unfrozen ones is a 
vexing problem; I might I suppose take them home each night with 
me and sleep with them underneath my pillow. In the little um- 
brella-stand stoves the green wood, which comes in so freshly cut, 
that the logs have ivy still unwithered twined around them, simply 



COMPANY A 39 

will not burn, and the stoves will smoke, mon Dieu, how they will 
smoke ! Every time the wind blows, the stove-pipes, secured shakily 
by the canvas walls, become disjointed, parting company with the 
stoves, and thenthe clouds pour forth as if we housed a captive Etna. 
In the barracks the boys teU me their shoes freeze to the floor 
over night. They have taken to sleeping two in one bunk for the 
sake of warmth. Blanket-stealing has been elevated to the rank of 
a deadly crime. Even the problem of keeping warm by day is an 
acute one. The boys who have money to burn are spending it to 
purchase extravagantly priced fur-lined gloves. The boys who 
can't afford them, wait until they see somebody lay a pair down. 
The taking of baths has become an act of heroism. 
"Took a bath today," growls a lad. "Think I ought to get a 
service stripe for that." 

While another boy grins; " Gee but I'm feelin' rich ! Took a bath 
today and found two pair o'socks and three shirts I didn't know 
I had!" 

"Now ain't you sorry you cut off the bottom of your coat!" 
a long-coated doughboy taunts an abbreviated one. "I told you 
not to. First, you're out of luck at Reveille 'cause the Top Kick 
can see you ain't got no leggin's on. An' now before you know it, 
you'll be havin' chilblains in your knees." 

"You should worry," growls back the short-coated one. "I 
couldn't stand that thing flappin' 'round my feet no longer. An' 
most of the other guys done it too." 

Which is true. Before this cold spell set in, half the boys in 
the company had taken a slice off the bottom of their overcoats, 
a procedure which leads to an odd effect en masse as each has 
chosen his own length which means everything from knees to 
ankles, and drives the exasparated Loots to demanding; "D'you 
want to know what you look like? Well, you look like heUI" 

In the village streets snow-ball fights are in order. As soon as 
the boys start an offensive, all the inhabitants of the Faubourg de 
France run out and put up their shutters. Better to sit in the dark 
while the battle rages than to risk a pane of precious window- 



40 B0URM0NT 

glass! Yesterday out at Iloud the boys caught the Y Secretary, 
a meek and mild little man, in the road and started to give him 
a thorough pelting. He ran for the hut, they chased him, he gained 
his refuge, locked the door after him; they proceeded to heap about 
half a ton of snow against it, making it immovable. The unhappy 
man had to remove a window frame and crawl out through the open- 
ing, then spend the rest of the afternoon digging out his hut door. 

Here at our billet our little pea-green porcelain stcve with the 
lavendar thistles growing over it has proved to be more ornamental 
then useful. Since the Gendarme is one of your naturally efficient 
souls, I feel that such practical details as building fires belong to 
her. If she wishes to coax and cozen the wretched thing for an hour 
on end, well and good. As for me I prefer to go and hug the cook 
stove in Madame's parlor. French fires don't burn the way Ameri- 
can fires do, I tell Madame. But to her the matter is quite simple. 
The stove, she says, doesn't understand English. 

Today I met the sergeant of engineers. Some imp impelled 
me to question jovially; 

" Where's that sled you promised me?" 

"It's almost done." My knees went weak beneath me. 

Tonight I confided my apprehensions to the Gendarme. She 
looked at me with an unpitying eye. 

"The more goose you, for encouraging him," was her cold com- 
fort. "What are you going to do about it?" 

"I'm going to pray for a thaw," I told her. 

Bourmont, January 8. 

Life at the Maison Chaput doesn't flow quite so peacefully these 
days as it did before Christmas. The disturbing factor is four- 
year old Max, left by his mother to visit his grandparents. Max 
is a spoiled child according to the Chaput point of view. He is ex- 
pected to walk a chalk line with his little red felt toes, and failing 
this, he is spanked early and often. It is unlucky for him that the 
fagots by the hearth afford a continual supply of handy switches. 

"The little Jesus will never bring you anything again at Christ- 



COMPANY A 41 

mas," warns Grandmamma; " never again! And neither will the 
Pere Nicolas!" Then she appeals to me; "All the little children 
in America are always well-behaved, are they not?" "But yes, 
certainly!" I reply, avoiding Max's eye. 

Coming home in the evening I often stop on my way back to 
the chilly Salle des Assiettes, in response to an urgent invitation, 
to warm myself at the fire-place. Old Monsieur will be sitting on 
one side of the hearth and I on the other, while Baby Max toasts 
his toes in their scarlet slippers on a stool between us. Sometimes 
they will sing for me. Monsieur had a fine voice when he was 
young and even now he sings with a delightful air, a sort of inde- 
scribable old gallantry that is a joy to me. When he and Max sing 
together the effect is irresistible. 

"Now we will sing Le Drapeau de la France" cries Monsieur. 
"We must stand for this!" And Monsieur in his gay red neck 
cloth and little Max in his blue checked pinafore stand up before 
the fire and sing with their hearts in the words. "Saluons le drapeau 
de la France" When they come to that line, Monsieur le Comman- 
dant veteran of 1870 and baby Max salute together. 

Then, " Vive la France! " I cry, and " Vive la France!" they echo. 

When new troops pass through town Max must always run to 
the door to cry ll Bon jour les Americains !" a salutation which is 
often followed I fear by a request for cigarettes, for Max, baby 
that he is, enjoys a smoke, much to his grandparents' amusement. 

Among the chinaware at the Maison Chaput there is a funny 
little jug which the Gendarme and I use for fetching hot water. 
It is made in the shape of a fat frog with a blue waistcoat and a 
pipe in one of his webbed feet. I had thought it was the famous 
frog who would a-wooing go, but Monsieur has his own explanation. 
It is the original St. Thiebault toad he declares, to tease me. Every 
time I come to draw a little hot water from the stove he must 
crack the self-same joke. 

"C'est le crapaud de Saint Thiebault" he cries and baby Max 
pipes up; " II a sol}!" 

Yesterday as I was passing through the front room on my way 



42 BOURMONT 

to the canteen Monsieur stopped me to draw me into conversation. 
There were several neighbors present. They gathered in a ring 
around me. I could see they had some weighty question to put 
to me. After a moment's hesitation it came out: 

"Pourquoi," they demanded, "pourquoi, does the American sol- 
dier blow his nose with his fingers? " 

I stared, taken aback. In order to make their meaning quite 
clear they illustrated with expressive gestures. 

"Why," I stammered, "does the poilu never do such a thing?" 

"But never!" they declared in chorus. "The poilu always uses 
his handkerchief!" And again they illustrated in pantomime. 

I labored to explain; the French climate had given the boys 
colds, and the question of laundry and clean handkerchiefs pre- 
sented difficulties 

"But," declared old Monsieur sagely, "in America I have heard 
it is the custom. There all the haut monde, it is said, lawyers, 
doctors, ministers, statesmen, blow their noses in that manner!" 

This was too much. I hurried from the room. 

This morning Monsieur accused me of being a coquette. Hotly 
I denied the charge. But why then, he rejoined triumphantly, had 
I asked for a looking-glass in my bed-room? 

Bourmont, January 9. 

Company A is going to China! Somebody heard somebody 
say that somebody told him that the Chaplain had said so. The 
boys are all excitement over the idea. 

"Won't that be jolly! You'll all be coming home with little 
shiny pigtails hanging down your backs!" I tease them. 

"Yes sir! an' we'll learn to eat our chow with chopsticks!" I 
have solemnly promised the boys that if Company A goes to China 
I will go too. What's more I will learn to make Chop Suey for 
them. I have always wanted to visit China. 

Thus does the army rumor make sport of us. Reports of this 
sort incessantly spring up among us, flourish for a day, to be for- 
gotten on the morrow. It is just a sign I suppose of the restless- 



COMPANY A 43 

ness that is rife among the boys, the nostalgia, the rebellion at the 
grinding monotony of their lives. Half the men in the company, 
it seems, have gone to their officers begging to be transferred into 
one of the two divisions that have already been in the lines. 

"I'm sick o' this kind o' life; what I came over here for was to 
fight," they growl. 

In the canteen they look at the French National Loan poster 
which has the Statue of Liberty on it, and speculate as to their 
chances of ever seeing her again. 

"Oh boy! but I bet there'll be some noise on board ship when 
we catch sight o' that ol' gal again!" 

"They wouldn't be breakin' my heart if they gave out orders 
tonight to start for home termorrer." The chorus groans assent. 
"No sir!" speaks up Private Gatts, "I don't want to go home until 
I've killed some of them Germans." 

"Aw, come off," rises the incredulous jeer; "you know, if they'd 
let you, you'd start out to walk to Saint Nazaire tonight if you 
had to carry your full pack an' your rifle an' your extra shoes." 

To beguile the tedium they indulge in what appears to be, next 
to crap-shooting, the most popular indoor sport of the A. E. F. — 
mustache raising. I don't believe there's a man in the company 
outside of Cummings and Maggioni who hasn't tried his luck at 
it. Sometimes it seems as though an epidemc of young mustaches 
will break out overnight as it were. The second lieutenants jeer 
and witticize in vain. There is one squad who have solemnly 
pledged themselves to remain mustachioed until they "can the 
Kaiser;" but for the most part, the little "Charlies" are fleeting 
affairs that come and go according to their owner's whim. This 
makes it quite confusing for me, because no sooner have I got to 
know a lad with a mustache by sight, than he shaves it off and alters 
his appearance so that I have to learn him all over again. But even 
the excitement of raising a mustache and having your picture 
taken and sending it back home to your best girl and then waiting 
to hear what she will say about it, affords only a brief diversion. 
And when that is done, we are face to face again with the stark 



44 BOURMONT 

sheer stupidity of drilling and hiking, hiking and drilling, day after 
day, week in and week out, in the slush, the mud, and the rain. 

"Another day, another dollar," remarks my friend Mr. Brady 
with philosophic resignation as he comes in from walking post at 
night, "Betsy the Toad-sticker," as he familiarly terms his rifle, 
over his shoulder. 

"I sure was strong on the patriotic stuff when I enlisted," mourns 
a lad cast in a less stoic mould, "but since I got over here 111 tell 
the world my patriotism is all shot to pieces." 

"Who called this here land Sunny France, I'd like to know?" is 
the indignant question which someone is bound to propose at least 
once a day. 

"I've only seen the sun twice since I've been here," complained 
one lad, "and then it was kind of mildewed." 

"It stopped raining for three hours the other day," remarked 
another, "an' I wrote home to my folks an' told 'em what a long 
dry spell we'd been having." 

Altogether we are inclined to take a very pessimistic view at 
present of our surroundings. 

"This land is a thousand years behind the times," is the re- 
iterated comment, and who can blame them, having seen nothing 
of France but these tiny primitive mud-and-muck villages? "It 
ain't worth fightin' for. Why if I owned this country I'd give it 
to the Germans and apologize to 'em." 

"It ain't the country, it's the people in it," asserted another lad 
darkly. 

While the Tall Kentuckian declared, "When I came to France, 
the height of my ambition was to kill a German. Now the height 
of my ambition is to kill a Frenchman." 

What can one say to them? I try fatuously to comfort by re- 
minding them of the good time coming when we all get home again. 
I paint rosy pictures of a grand parade of the division up Fifth 
Avenue, but they are sceptical. 

" Huh ! That won't be for us ! All the fuss will be for the National 
Guard and the draft guys. The reg'lars don't never get no credit." 



COMPANY A 45 

Then someone will start to hum the song which goes; 
"O why didn't I wait to be drafted? 
Why didn't I wait to be cheered?" 
"Well I'll tell the world that you deserve the credit!" 
Anyway Company A has settled one point: if they ever march 
up Fifth Avenue I am to march with them. 

Bourmont, January ii. 

The "convicts" are out of quarantine, and none the worse it 
seems for the experience. Yet my family is still depleted. Forty 
boys from the company have been sent out on a wood-chopping 
detail. Detachments from each of the four companies in rotation 
are being sent out into the forest to cut fuel for the use of the First 
Battalion and now it is our turn. 

The boys, we learn, are billeted in a twelfth century fortress 
in a tiny village at the forest's edge. From time to time some of 
them hike the four miles in to Saint Thiebault after the day's work 
is done, in order to get a cup of hot chocolate and to tease a candle 
out of me. For the chateau boasts none of the modern luxuries 
of heat and light. 

"What do you do in the evenings?" I asked Mr. Gatts. 

"Sit in the cafe. It's the only place there is to go." 

"I'm sorry." 

"Well you needn't worry about the boys drinkin'. They ain't 
none of them got no money. All they can do is to sit and watch 
the Frenchies." 

Indeed such a long time has passed since our last payday that 
the whole company is feeling the pinch of poverty. Canteen sales 
have narrowed down to the three essentials; chocolate, cigarettes 
and chewing gum. I am running accounts on my personal re- 
sponsibility, giving them "jawbone" as the boys say, a proceeding 
at which our Secretary looks with a disapproving eye. To be sure 
the air is full of rumours of impending payday but meanwhile there 
is no disguising the fact that the great majority is "dead broke." 

Says Sergeant X to Sergeant Z, a boy with a curious cast of 



46 BOURMONT 

countenance; "Say, Bill, do you remember the time I paid ten 
cents to see you in a cage at Bamum's? Well I want that dime 
back now." 

Another lad in answer to the appeal of "got a cent?" replies 
with feeling; " One cent? Why man, if I had a cent I'd go to Paris!" 

They have court-martialed the lieutenant who beat Malotzzi. 
His punishment is to be transferred to another regiment. 

Bourmont, January 14. 

Madame is sick and I am worried. It isn't so much that she is 
dangerously ill as that she is dangerously old. She lies in the big 
blue room upstairs, looking like a patient aged Madonna, without 
a fire, and with no one to look after her. Monsieur it seems has 
made up his mind to her demise and piously resigned himself. I 
called in an army doctor. 

"She's pretty low," he said, "but it isn't medicine she needs so 
much as nursing." 

I informed Monsieur. He must get a woman to come in and take 
care of her. But there was no such woman. He must try to find 
one. But no, it was impossible! "Well at least, you can make 
a fire in her room," I told him. As for La Petite , she has proved 
herself a broken reed. Lacking Madame's rigid eyes upon her, 
she has become lazy and negligent. Moreover she is indubitably 
in love with some doughty doughboy, the proof being that she 
spends the time when she should be gathering the harvest of dust 
from the Salle des Assiettes in copying English phrases from our 
books on to the Gendarme's pink blotting-paper. Yesterday we 
found "Welcome Americans" scrawled all over it. Meanwhile 
Monsieur seems to consider himself as qualifying for a martyr's 
crown because he gets his own meals and washes his own dishes. 
"Mais, regardez Mademoiselle!" he calls to me as I pass through 
the living-room, and flourishes the dish-cloth at me with a tragic 
air. So between excursions to the canteen I am trying to play 
nurse to Madame, and a pretty poor one I make, I fear. Worse 
still, I must act as interpreter for the Doctor, whose French is 



COMPANY A 47 

absolutely nil, at every visit and since my scanty stock of French 
phrases hardly includes a sick-room vocabulary I am often abso- 
lutely at a loss. But we muddle through somehow and the Doctor 
gets his reward when we stop to speak to Monsieur in the front-room 
afterwards, for then Monsieur must bring out a bottle of cham- 
pagne and together they sit in front of the fire and toast each other. 

Yesterday the Doctor prescribed fresh eggs. I told Monsieur. 
But there were none in Bourmont he declared. 

"Very well," I said, "then I'll get them." 

I started out to search. I knew of course that eggs in France 
these days were difficult. In some places the Americans have been 
forbidden, on account of the scarcity, to buy either eggs or chickens; 
a ruling which officers have been known to evade by the simple 
expedient of renting laying hens. But no such prohibition exists 
at present in Saint Thiebault. Just the other day a lad told me 
he had consumed twelve fried eggs at one sitting. 

"Yes and Corporal G. ate more than I did." 

" How many did he eat? " 

"Oh, just thirteen." 

"No wonder," I observed, "that the French talk about la fa- 
mine!" I started a house-to-house canvas of Saint Thiebault only 
to be met by a shake of the head and "Pas des oeufs" everywhere 
I went. Finally back at the canteen I put the question in despair 
to the boys. "Have you been to the tobacco shop?" they in- 
quired. So to the tobacco shop I hurried and sure enough there 
they were, all one wanted at the rate of seven francs a dozen. 

Last night Madame had an egg-nogg and this morning an 
omelette. Now the Doctor says that she is better. 

Bourmont, January 17. 
If my fairy god-mother should lend me her magic wand, the 
very first thing I would wish for would be a dinner, a real dinner 
just like Mother used to cook, for Company A. It would start with 
turkey and cranberry sauce and end with several kinds of pie, 
ice-cream and chocolate layer cake. There would be no soup on 



48 BOURMONT 

the menu. Such a meal I am sure would do more to raise the morale 
of Company A than the news of a smashing allied victory. It is 
the everlasting sameness, the perpetual reiteration of a certain few 
articles of food, I suppose, that makes the boys' "chow" so de- 
pressing. 

"I've eaten so much bacon since I've been in the army," re- 
marked one boy mournfully, "that I'm ashamed to look a pig in 
the face." 

There is one question which the whole A. E. F. would like to 
have answered. They've "got the bacon," but what became of 
the ham? 

Far more hated than the bacon, however, is the "slum," a word 
which Pat informs me is derived from the " slumgullion" of the 
hobo. It is this "slum" that gives the doughboy his horror of 
anything like soup. 

"When I get back to New York," said a lad to me the other day, 
"I'm going to go into a real swell hotel and order a big dish o' 
slum. Then I'm going to order a regular dinner, beefsteak and 
oysters and all the fixings, and then I'm going to sit and laugh at 
the slum." 

Pat came in with a whoop after dinner yesterday. "We had a 
change today," he sang out, "they put a pickle in the beans!" 
This noon he bounced in again. "We had a change today," he 
shouted, "they cut the beans lengthwise instead of cuttin' them 
acrosst." 

I made a fatal error. "Don't you like beans?" I asked. "Why 
I'm very fond of them. I wish they'd give them to us at our mess 
once in a while." 

Pat looked at me with his sharp eyes narrowing. "D'you mean 
it?" 

"Why of course I do!" 

He turned and walked out of the hut. Two minutes later he 
returned with a hunk of bread and a mess-kit brimfull of beans; 
he laid them on the counter in front of me. I gasped but did my 
best to rise to the occasion. I was delighted to see those beans, 



COMPANY A 49 

I assured him. I had just been starting out to go to mess; a little 
bird had told me they were to have roast pork, French fries, and 
peach pie for dinner, but now I would stay at the hut and eat 
beans instead. Then I tasted the beans. They were as hard as 
bullets, they stuck in my throat; I had never known anything 
could be quite so awful. But Pat's eyes were upon me. There was 
nothing for it but to swallow those beans. So swallow them I 
did, every last one, and there were positively at least a thousand. 
Then I washed the mess-kit and returned it to friend Pat with 
effusive thanks. At least, I complimented myself, I had been 
game. Tonight, just as I was starting out for my supper of toast 
and chocolate with the little old ladies of the Rue Dieu, Pat sud- 
denly appeared on the other side of the counter. 

"We had 'em again tonight," he announced joyfully, "and I 
thought since you were so fond of 'em," — he pushed another 
mess-kit full of beans across the counter. I glared at him. I had 
vainly been trying to recover from the dinner beans all afternoon. 

"Take those things away," I snapped, "I don't want to lay eyes 
on another bean as long as ever I live!" Pat had called my bluff. 

For the last week Company A has had guests in the mess-hall. 
Several French soldiers have been sent here to instruct the boys in 
some special drill; it was arranged that they eat and sleep with the 
Americans. Dreary as the boys find their chow, it proved a treat 
to the poilus who evidently spread the news of their good fortune 
among their friends in the vicinity, for day by day the number of 
Frenchmen messing with Company A was mysteriously increased. 

"Yes sir!" the indignant Mess Sergeant declared to me. "They 
started in with five and now they've grown to be fifteen. I can't 
tell one from t'other because all these frogs look alike to me, and 
they know as how I can't sling their lingo. That's a nice thing for 
them to be putting over on me!" 

But yesterday he got his chance to get even. He caught one 
of the Frenchmen putting a piece of bread in his pocket. It is of 
course a military offense to carry food out of the mess-hall. 

"I just sailed right into that guy" — the Mess Sergeant is a 



So BOURMONT 

large and husky specimen — "and I sure did wipe up the floor some 
with him. And since then the whole gang of 'em has been scared 
stiff. Those frogs just watch me all the time. There ain't a minute 
when I'm in the mess-hall that one of 'em takes his eyes off me." 

The other day, they tell me, one of the boys in the company, 
possessed of a practical turn, employed his newly-issued "tin 
derby " as a kettle in which to boil some eggs. The delicacy 
proved dear. Betrayed by the blackened helmet, he was tried and 
fined twenty dollars. 

Bourmont, January 20. 

I'm off for Paris! My eyes have been in a horrid state for the 
last week. I have had all the doctors in the neighborhood treating 
them and they only get worse and worse. The Chief is going up 
to Paris tomorrow and has decided that the best thing to do is to 
take me along to see a specialist. 

Madame is so much better that I don't feel uneasy at leaving 
her. But I hate to desert the boys, especially as the hut is in such 
a state. Yesterday we had a storm and the wind almost wrecked 
our tent. There was one moment while I was out at dinner, when 
such a gust hit it, that, as the boys said, " She sure seemed a goner." 
At that moment there was a stampede for the door, the boys shoot- 
ing out of the tent "just like seeds from an orange when you squeeze 
it." But thanks to the Secretary and a crowd of boys who got 
out and hung for dear life on to the guy ropes, the tent came through 
damaged but still standing. When I returned after mess I found 
our hut with two great gaping rents torn in the outer walls and 
the inner lining all ripped loose and hanging down from the ceiling, 
so that one felt exactly as if one were inside a punctured zeppelin. 

Reports coming in this morning from other points on the divi- 
sion state that two tents actually did collapse during the tempest, 
and that one man, caught beneath the wreckage, had his collar- 
bone broken. So we can count ourselves lucky. 

Tonight I said au 'voir to Company A, telling them that if pay- 
day should occur during my absence, I hoped they all would be 



COMPANY A 51 

very, very good. Some of the boys lugubriously predicted that 
I would never return, while others darkly insinuated that they 
suspected I was "goin' to Paris to git married." To show them 
what my intentions honestly were, I inquired if there were any 
errands I could do for them in the city. Corporal G. looked at 
me, stammered, hesitated. There was something he would like, 
only he didn't want to bother me. What was it? He paused, grew 
red, then blurted it out. 

"If it ain't too much trouble, could you send me a picture post- 
card while you're away? I ain't never had a post-card from Paris." 

H6pital Claude-Bernard 

Porte D'Aubervilliers, 

Paris, January 25. 

This is a hideous hospital. They wake you up in the middle of 
the night to wrap you in a mustard poultice. They wake you up 
in the wee sma' hours and order you to brush your teeth. And 
nobody in the whole establishment from head-doctor to scrub-lady 
knows a word of English; except the night-nurse and she knows 
"mumpsss!" like that she says it, "MUMPSSSSS!" Not that 
I have them; I have the measles. I don't know where I got them. 
They were, so far as I am aware, almost the only known malady 
which we didn't have at Bourmont. Probably some lad who was 
passing through the town and stopped in at the canteen gave them 
to me. It was undoubtedly the measles that were affecting my 
eyes; sometimes it seems they act that way. 

They sent me to this hospital because it was the only hospital 
in Paris admitting women that had room for me: known officially 
as the city hospital for contagious diseases, among Americans it 
passes as " the pest-house." 

They think I'm a weird one here, because I want my window 
open. Twenty-nine times a day at least an infirmiere will come 
hurrying in and bang it shut and twenty-nine times a day I crawl 
out of bed and open it again. 

The nursing here is all done by infirtnttres, or untrained women 



52 BOURMONT 

under the direction of two real nurses, one in charge of this wing 
during the day, the other during the night. Some of these infirm- 
ieres go about in curl papers, others wear sabots. They mean well 
enough, but they are overworked, and frankly peasant types, with 
little education and almost no notion of cleanliness or of much 
else that is supposed to pertain to nursing. Last night a fat old 
soul without many teeth came waddling into my room to have a 
look at that interesting curiosity, la pauvre petite Dame Americaine. 
When she saw my open window she was so overcome with aston- 
ishment that she hurried out and fetched a companion to regard 
the phenomenon. The two of them stood and stared at it and dis- 
cussed the matter between themselves for quite a while, then the 
fat one turned to me and remarked with a toothless but engaging 
smile ; it was very warm in America where I lived, was it not? When 
I replied that, instead, it was much colder in winter there than here 
in Paris, they looked aghast and flatly incredulous. Their only 
explanation of the matter had been, it seemed, that I was accus- 
tomed to living in the tropics and just didn't have sense enough 
to suit my habits to the atmosphere. 

Just outside the hospital there is a munitions factory. At night 
the light over the front door shines into my room and day and 
night the machinery keeps up an incessant thudding hum that says 
as plain as words over and over and over: Kill the Bodies. Kill the 
Boches. Kill the Bodies. Once in a long while the machines stop for 
a few moments in order, I suppose, to catch their breath and then I 
grow dreadfully worried, for I know that if someone doesn't keep 
on killing the Boches every second, they will be breaking through 
the lines and pouring in over France in great drowning grey waves. 

January 27. I haven't got the measles after all; I have the Ger- 
man measles, only they don't call it that in French I am glad to 
say. At first I was so very red and speckled that they thought 
I had the rougeole, but now they have decided it is only the rubeole 
after all. A concourse of doctors considered me yesterday morning 
and pronounced the verdict. "But then," I demanded, "if it's 



COMPANY A S3 

only the rubeole can't I be leaving tout de suite? " For the French 
do not consider quarantine necessary for the rubeole. " Eight 
days," they answered, and when I expostulated they turned on their 
collective heels and marched callously out the door, each one hold- 
ing up eight fingers apiece as a parting rejoinder. 

Last night I resisted a great temptation. This place is full of 
doors with little glass panes in them. As I lay awake in bed in 
the middle of the night, a wild desire grew on me to seize my big 
green bottle of mineral water by the neck and see how many panes 
of glass I could account for before they nabbed me. I had a per- 
fect vision of myself, flying down the hall in my little flour-sack 
chemise of a night-gown, long legs stretching out beneath, going 
zip, bang, right and left into those window panes. I have seldom 
wanted to do anything quite so badly. And then just to top 
off with I was going to wring the interne's neck. He is a little 
shrimp of a man — that interne, with no chin and a sort of scrawny 
picked-chicken neck, a neck that gets on one's nerves. 

When they sent me to this hospital I comforted myself with the 
thought that I would at least learn a little French while staying 
here, but the only thing I have learned so far is that gargariser 
means gargle and any goose might have guessed that. 

January 28. The Chief has sent me a rose-pink cyclamen. 
It is a lovely thing and very elaborately done up with pink crepe 
paper and a large bow of shell-pink ribbon. Now I am no longer 
an object of any interest. Every last doctor, nurse, interne and 
infirmiere who comes into my room to take a look at la petite Mees, 
immediately turns his or her back on me and admires the cyclamen 
instead. I gather such objects are rare in French hospitals, for 
they examine and discuss it at the greatest length, always winding 
up with the remark that it must have "cost very dear." 

Not having anything else to do I lie with my eyes shut and think. 
And of course I have been thinking chiefly about Company A. I 
have thought among other things of a play, or rather a dramatic 
charade in three acts, which we might give in the hut. It is to be 



54 BOURMONT 

entitled Slum. In the first act, — BUI — three doughboys hit on a 
plan to encompass the Kaiser's death and so become rich by gain- 
ing the proffered reward: — they will send him a dish of slum! The 
second act, — et — shows a room in the Potsdam palace with Kaiser 
Bill and His Side Whiskers, the Lord High Chancellor, discussing 
the food situation. The slum appears; the Kaiser partakes of it 
and falls writhing to the floor. The last act shows a typical barn- 
loft billet, with rats squeaking, chickens clucking et cetera, where 
the Soldiers Three of the first act have their lodging. They receive 
the tidings of the Kaiser's death; wild rejoicings ensue, as in fancy 
they spend their fortunes; only to be cut short by the discovery 
that the cook who made the slum has already claimed the reward. 
I think we can stage it successfully, though the costumes for the 
Kaiser and His Side Whiskers present some difficulties. One thing 
only troubles me; will it hurt the Mess Sergeant's feelings? 

January 30. They have relented. They have shortened my 
stay. I am to be let out tomorrow, but I must reposer a few days 
before going back to work. Bother! I haven't heard anything 
from Bourmont for ten days and I am full of uneasy apprehensions. 
Since I have been in the hospital the cyclamen has been the only 
word I have had from the outside world. I have been cut off as 
completely as if I were in a tomb. Ah well, some day I'll get back 
to the hut again I suppose, and when I do, if those boys aren't 
almost half as glad to see me as I am to see them, why I'll know 
that some other canteen lady has been surreptitiously stealing their 
affections, and I shall put poison in her soup. 

Hopital Claude-Bernard, 

Paris, January 31. 

I have been in a big air raid; this is just how it all happened: 

It was a white night in the hospital for me. I had lain for hours, 

it seemed, in the little blue room watching through the glass panes 

of my door the coiffed head of a young infirmiere bent over her 

embroidery. She sat outside my door because there was a light 

in the hall just there. Suddenly my drowsy ears were pierced by 



COMPANY A 55 

a long weird hoot. In an instant the girl had leaped to her feet 
and switched off the light, then she turned and ran down the hall. 
A moment later and the building was in darkness. I jumped from 
my bed and ran to the window. The light in front of the munitions 
factory was out, there seemed an uncanny silence, the machinery 
had been stopped. I hurried to the door. The corridor was full 
of hastening forms, infirmieres, their loose white robes showing 
dimly in the grey light. 

"Qu'est ce qui arrive?" I demanded. 

11 Les Bodies!" 

The night nurse was peering from my window. 

"It's the first warning," she whispered. "See! the lights of 
Paris still shine." 

But even as we looked, the light across the sky that was Paris 
flickered, dimmed, flashed out. At the same moment two great 
golden stars rose over the munitions factory. 

" Les avions!" cried the night nurse. 

And all the time the sirens kept up their ghostly wailing, like 
nothing one could imagine except a vast host of lost souls. Then 
the guns began. A moment later a crashing thud told that a bomb 
had fallen in our neighborhood. The night nurse drew me hurriedly 
into the hall. 

"Lie down against the wall, — close — like this," she ordered. 

Up and down the corridor every space by the wall was occupied 
by the huddled form of an infirmiere buried beneath a mattress. 
The night nurse, who had a whole heap of mattresses to herself, 
pushed one across to me. I lay on the top, finding it more com- 
fortable that way. 

The bombs were falling nearer. A child in one of the wards woke 
up and began to wail fretfully. No one heeded her. There was 
a flash and then a tearing thud that shook the hospital. I had one 
ghastly moment, a thrill of panic terror at our utter helplessness 
as we lay there awaiting what seemed the inevitable coming of 
destruction. The moment passed. I got up and slipped down the 
side corridor to the glass door. The sky was full of moving lights; 



56 BOURMONT 

some burned with a steady brilliancy, some flickered and went 
out like fireflies, a few flashed red. There was no telling which was 
friend or foe. They seemed to be proceeding in all directions with- 
out plan or purpose. The air pulsated with the humming drone of 
their motors. They were like a swarm of angry hornets I thought. 
Across the road, standing on the top of a high wall, in sharp sil- 
houette against the sky, three poilus stood to watch. Every now 
and then an infirmiere, curiosity outweighing caution, would leave 
her hiding-place and creep to the door beside me only to burrow 
like a bug, a moment later, underneath her mattress once more. 

" Mees! N'avez-vous pas peur? " 

"Maisnon!" 

"Ah, vous etes un soldat!" 

I went back to my room and climbed out on the window-sill. 
At first I thought the lights of Paris had been turned on again, but 
this time they were color of rose. As I looked the pink flush deep- 
ened, grew ruddy, flamed across the sky. I called the night nurse. 
"Cest une incendie" she wailed staccato. "Quel malheurl" 

So Paris was on fire. 

As we watched two big puffs of white smoke rose over the muni- 
tions factory, spread into a cloud, drifted slowly toward us. The 
night nurse sniffed, then shut the window hurriedly. 

"La gaz" she whispered. I questioned it but left the window 
shut. 

An aeroplane swung low over the munitions factory, so near 
that it looked like a great lazy fish with the rose fight from below 
shining on its belly. Was it friend or enemy? 

The bombs were dropping close again. One could see the flashes 
and feel the jar of the explosions which made the windows rattle. 

"Oh les sales Bochest" 

"Ohlalal" 

The agonized wails sounded half stifled from beneath the mat- 
tresses. 

"Taisezl Ecoutezl" It was the night nurse's voice. 

The front door slammed. A fat infirmiere in a badly shattered 



COMPANY A 57 

state of nerves stumbled down the hall weeping out unintelligible 
woes. At my mattress she came to a standstill, then ducked and 
tried to crawl beneath it; failing, she sat down on top of me. I 
ventured a polite protest, — in vain. The night nurse heard me. 
She emerged from beneath her heap. Followed a scene dramatic, 
unforgettable. Mattresses scattered to each side of her, heedless 
of the falling bombs, with Gallic passion she proceeded to point 
out to the sobbing infirmiere the shortcomings of her behaviour. 
But the fat lady proved unrepentant, her terror at the bombs 
superseding even her awe of the night nurse. She sat tight, hold- 
ing her ground. She even ventured to answer back. The scene 
grew more intense. After I had heard the night nurse discharge 
the infirmiere some six times over, feeling a trifle out of place, I 
managed to crawl from beneath and made my way back to the 
window. No more bombs were falling but the guns still barked. 
As I watched, a burning plane looking like a great tinsel ball seared 
its way through the sky, falling just to the right of Paris. 

'"Pray God it is a Boche!" I thought. 

A round-eyed infirmiere peered in at the door, staring curiously 
at me. 

"Meesf Vous allez retourner en AmeriqueV 

1 1 Mais out! A pres la guerre! ' ' 

The red glare over Paris was fading out. The machines in the 
munitions factory began to throb once more. In the grey light 
at the window I looked at my watch. It was fifteen minutes past 
one. I turned to crawl into bed feeling cold and very sleepy. Some 
one touched my sleeve; it was the night nurse. She was staring 
out the window with eyes that saw nothing. 

"And how many little children will be dead in the morning do 
you think?" she asked. 

Bourmont, February 5. 

The blow that I somehow dimly apprehended while I was in the 
hospital has fallen. Last night late I arrived from Paris. The 
first thing I learned was, that with the addition of some new workers 
a general shuffle of the women at Headquarters was to take place. 



5 8 BOURMONT 

This morning the Chief called us together and gave us our new 
assignments. The Gendarme and I are to leave Bourmont. Since 
I have been away regimental Headquarters have been moved from 
Saint Thiebault to Goncourt, a town about two miles to the south, 
and the whole regiment with the exception of the First Battalion 
concentrated there. The Y. at Goncourt has had a hard time of it. 
Originally it occupied a barracks; then the regimental machine-gun 
company moved in and the Y. must move out. So the Y settled 
itself in an old stone mill by the Meuse, only to have the military 
authorities decide that they needed that mill for a guard-house. So 
once more the Y. moved, this time to a little old house in the centre 
of the village; and here according to last reports it still is, for the 
simple reason that nobody else has any use for the little old house. 
Meanwhile, however, they are putting up a Big Hut which is to be 
ready in from one to three weeks, all according to who is making the 
estimate. It is to Goncourt that the Gendarme and I have been 
assigned. According to the Chief this is a " promo tion." 

"It's the largest, the most important place on the division 
now," he declared; "I'm sending you there because you made good 
at Saint Thiebault." 

But this little piece of taffy doesn't seem to help matters a bit. 
The only way to look at it is that it's a case of the greatest good 
for the greatest number, and of course numerically Goncourt is 
about ten times as important as Saint Thiebault. And anyway 
it wouldn't do the least good to kick against the pricks because 
when all is said and done one is under orders like a soldier. After 
all it isn't as if I were going to Greenland or to Timbuctoo. And 
yet at even only two miles distance, so tied to the work one must 
be, one might almost as well be in a different planet. 

As for Saint Thiebault, they are going to have to do with just 
a man secretary there. The place is too small, the Chief says, to 
be allowed more than one worker. 

We won't be moving for several days yet. I'm not going to say 
a word about it to Company A until the very last moment. I 
hate partings. 



CHAPTER II 

GONCOURT 

THE DOUGHBOYS 

Goncourt, February ii. , 
The little old house which now harbors the Y. formerly served, 
it seems, as guard-house. To some it must have a strangely fami- 
liar air. Downstairs there are two small rooms; the front one 
stone-paved, with a dark carved cupboard in one corner which 
formerly enclosed the family bed, and a huge fireplace; the back 
one with a dirt floor over which uncertain boards have shakily 
been laid. The front room we use for the canteen, the back, with 
four rough tables, serves as a make-shift writing room. The walls 
are dim with smoke and grime, the windows in both rooms lack 
half their panes, yet the odd little place has an atmosphere, a 
charm all its own. Upstairs soldiers are billeted. When the din 
of business dies down in the canteen, one can hear the crisp rattle 
of dice as the boys shoot craps on the floor overhead. 

In accordance with military regulations here we cannot open 
the canteen until four in the afternoon. But a large part of the 
morning is easily spent in cleaning out the hut and arranging the 
stock for the afternoon and evening onslaught. At Saint Thie- 
bault the detail that " policed up" the camp in the morning swept 
out our tent for us, but here one wields one's own broom and 
shovel, — for first of all one must shovel out the mud that's on the 
floor! Cleaning the canteen, however, I find, though a dirty, is 
quite a remunerative job, for in the heaps of litter on the floor 
money lurks. According to the ethics of the game if money is 
found back of the counter it belongs in the till, but if in front it 
goes to the finder. Sometimes the find is five centimes, sometimes 
fifty and once it was five francs! The litter — chocolate wrappers, 



6o GONCOURT 

orange peels and cigarette boxes — is all swept into the fireplace 
and then touched off with a match; a regular bon-fire ensues. This 
morning we had left the front door open; immediately the fire was 
started a throng of villagers crowded around to look in. They were 
scandalized at the conflagration. The house was old, they cried; 
we would set the chimney on fire, we would burn up the building, 
we would burn down the whole town! One ancient and portly 
dame in a frenzy of protest dashed into the room and fairly danced 
about the hearth, shaking her apron at the flames and calling for 
ashes to cover them. But before she could get her ashes the fire 
died down and the excitement with it. 

The Gendarme and I are billeted in a tiny house just at the vil- 
lage edge. Our low second story looks down upon the street, so 
narrow that it seems one could almost reach out and touch hands 
with the houses opposite. But what a street it is! Underneath our 
low window the whole world goes by; American officers on horse- 
back, French officers in limousines, American mule teams, French 
wood teams with three white horses harnessed one in front of the 
other, and always the troops; going by at dawn in the semi-dark- 
ness, their rhythmic incessant tramp weaving itself into one's 
waking dreams, passing by at noon, swinging back down the hill 
as it grows dusk, singing snatches of song as they tramp. As I 
lie a-bed in the morning before getting up to peer out the window 
into the yellow misty atmosphere I can always calculate the exact 
state of the weather by the amount of squelch which those march- 
ing boots make in the muddy road. 

Company H is billeted on this same street with us. The first 
morning after we arrived the Gendarme and I were startled out of 
sleep by First Call blown directly underneath our window. Hardly 
had the last note sounded when a shout fit to wake the dead went 
up. 

"Get to hell up, all of you! Rise and shine!" 
Followed a tremendous banging and kicking at all the stable doors 
along the street accompanied by a torrent of vivid and spicy ad- 
monitions. The Gendarme and I gasped and chuckled. This was 



THE DOUGHBOYS 61 

rich. Were we always to be awakened in so picturesque a fashion? 
But the next morning we listened in vain. First Call was blown at 
the far end of the street and followed by a solemn silence; and so 
it has been ever since. Now that American ladies are known to be 
living on the street Company H must get up decorously. 

Goncoxjrt, February 12. 

The fireplace is easily the feature of our funny little hut. 
Around this at night the lads crowd perched on packing-boxes to 
smoke, chew gum and gossip. As the first mad rush of business 
at the canteen dies down a little I edge up towards the fireplace 
in order to get a wee share in the conversation. 

They have caught a spy! One of the cooks in F Company. He 
was a deserter from the German Army some one said. They 
caught him putting dope in the slum. The doctors were analyzing 
it now. It's a wonder the whole company wasn't poisoned. Yes, 
and they found plans of the camp in his pocket too. He hasn't 
eaten a thing since they arrested him. All he does is just to walk 
up and down the guard-house. Seems as if he were kind of crazy. 

And so they gossip. A sad-eyed bugler remarks to me that he'd 
be a rich man if he only had all the hob-nailed shoes that had been 
thrown at him. Another boy wonders what he'd do if he had " both 
arms shot off and then the gas alarm sounded." And always they 
must be rowing about their respective states. 

"Neebraska! Where's Neebraska? Is that in the United States 
or Canada? " 

"Noo Hampshire! Huh! There ain't nothin' but mountains 
there. Why my old man told me that when they let the cows out 
to grass there they had to put stilts on one side of 'em so they won't 
fall off'n the pasture." 

Then they turn on me. 

"Boston! When you get ten miles from Boston you can smell 
the beans bakin'." 

"But I don't come from Boston," I protest. 

"Well there ain't nothin' much in Massachusetts outsider Bos- 



62 GONCOURT 

ton. Why the state of Noo Hampshire is goin' to rent the rest o' 
Massachusetts for a duck-yard." 

And so it goes. 

"Gee! but it's good to get into one shop where you don't have 
to talk frog talk!" exclaimed one lad tonight. 

"I've just heard the greatest compliment for you," another lad 
declares solemnly, " the greatest compliment that could possibly 
be paid any woman." 

"Why, what was it?" 

"I just heard a feller say; 'My! don't she look different from the 
French girls!'" 

A flushed-faced lad leans over my end of the counter; 

"You know to talk to an American girl like this again, it's like, 
it's like— " 

Again and again he tries only to become helplessly inarticulate. 
Then pulling a large bunch of letters "from lady friends" from 
his pocket, nothing will do but he must tell me about each one. 
Finally in a fit of prodigal generosity he bestows a handful on me, 
"Because I'm an American and you're one too." As he makes the 
presentation something falls to the floor with a little click. We 
search among the litter on the floor, the lad on all fours; finally 
the lost is found, — a broken bit of comb about two inches and a 
quarter long. This is a happy chance, he explains, for he is com- 
pany barber and with the company comb gone E Company would 
be out of luck. 

Always our presence here is something that seems so strange 
to them as to be almost incredible. 

"Will you please tell me," asked a serious-looking lad tonight, 
"what consideration could possibly induce two American girls 
to come to a place like this?" 

Continually I am encountering boys who are sure that they've 
"seen me somewhere." 

"Say, didn't you use to live in Milwaukee?" 

"Haven't I seen you in Seattle? Well, if it warn't you, it was 
somebody that looked just like you!" 



THE DOUGHBOYS 63 

I suppose it is simply because I look American that I look 
familiar to them. But the facts in the case seem to be that I have 
been observed by some member of the A. E. F. in practically every 
one of the large cities of the U. S. A. One boy nearly started a 
fight in camp the other night by declaring that in spite of the evi- 
dence of my nose he knew I was of Hebraic origin. He had seen 
me, he solemnly insisted, "goin' with a Jew feller in Philadelphia. " 

Undoubtedly it is because they have so little to think about in 
these drab days that they are so pathetically curious. Every little 
thing you say or do is repeated, discussed all over camp. Sometimes 
curiosity gets hold of one of the bolder spirits to such an extent 
that he ventures the question; 

"How much do you get paid for smiling at the soldiers?'' 

And when they learn that you are a volunteer and are paying 
for the privilege of being there, their amazement is so blank as to 
be positively ludicrous. 

Goncourt, February 13. 

One of the nicest things about Goncourt is our mess. This we 
have at the House Across the Street, which is next to the House 
of the Madonna. We mess en famille with the family Peirut, the 
Gendarme, Mr. K. and I, and we eat the family fare which con- 
sists chiefly of soup, boiled meat and carrots, supplemented by 
various additions such as sugar, cocoa, jam and canned corn from 
the commissary. I can never quite decide which is quainter, the 
family or the setting. 

In America we have the phrase living-room, in France they have 
it. In this one high-ceilinged room the daily life of the family 
is complete. Here is the kitchen stove and the dinner table, here 
are the beds of Madame and Monsieur, Madame's in one corner 
hung with dim flowered chintz, Monsieur's in another brave with 
a beautiful old red India shawl. Here is the broad stone sink under 
the window, with the drain running out into the street, where the 
family makes its morning toilet. Here are the great dark armoires 
which hold clothing, china-ware and stores of all sorts. Here is 



64 GONCOURT 

the littered desk where the family correspondence is carried on; 
and here is the larder, a huge slab of pork and a ham hanging from 
the beams over one's head, while on a stick in front of the fireplace 
a row of little fishes hang by their tails in dumb expectation of a 
Friday. And here too is the family shrine, a little wooden Madonna 
in red and blue, found as Madame tells us in the ancient city of 
La Mothe, which, destroyed in 1645, now exists as a wonderful 
ruin crowning a hill some two miles to the west. 

If the stove-wood is found lacking at meal-time, Monsieur rises 
from his chair and saws an armful beside the dinner-table. If 
Madame decides while we are eating our soup that a piece of ham 
will improve the menu she stands upon her chair and cuts a 
slice in the air over our heads. On wash days one picks one's way 
to the table past the pails which hold the family linen in soak, 
and later eats one's soupe a pain under a brave array of drying 
garments slung from wall to wall. 

The family, which consists of Monsieur, Madame and Mademoi- 
elle, the two sons being in service, are the most hospitable souls 
alive. Continually they urge, "Mangez, mangezV and then, 
"Vous ties timide!" Their feelings are dreadfully hurt if each 
one of us refuses to eat enough for two. They seem somehow to 
have acquired the idea that Americans need a vast deal of sweeten- 
ing, so they offer you sugar, commissary sugar, with everything, 
and they are gently but definitely disappointed when you decline 
to heap it on your mashed potato. 

Mile. Jeane, clear-skinned, bright-eyed, capable, energetic yet 
possessed of a warm charm withal, is forewoman of the little glove 
factory in town. 

"Are there many employees?" I asked. 

"But no. Eight only. Since the Americans came to town all 
the women have deserted the factory in order to wash the Ameri- 
cans' clothes." 

Monsieur, it appears, is a wood-cutter by profession. He comes 
home from a hard day's chopping looking like a genus of the woods 
himself with his worn brown velour suit, his wrinkled brown skin 



THE DOUGHBOYS 65 

and his ragged brown beard which resembles exactly those bundles 
of fine twigs which the French burn in their fireplaces. When 
Monsieur was ten years old the Germans occupied the town and 
sixteen of them slept in this very room. They were perfect pigs, 
he says, and ate everything they could lay their hands on; "But," 
he adds, "they didn't like our bread!" 

Sunday mornings all the men in town, including the Man With 
One Leg, and all the dogs start off together, the men armed with 
guns and each carrying a musette bag or knapsack. Papa puts on 
his shooting coat with the fancy buttons each depicting a different 
bird or beast of the chase, takes down his old shot-gun from the wall, 
and joins them. At dusk they come back again, empty-handed, 
but seemingly well content. Their modus operandi, I gather, is to 
proceed to a comfortable spot in the woods, then all sit down, 
drink vin rouge and wait for the game. Indeed one doughboy 
declares, that passing by one of those open alleys which intersect 
the forests here, he once saw an old Frenchman standing with his 
gun in a drizzling rain, patiently waiting for a shot while by his 
side stood another "old frog " holding an umbrella over him. 

Goncourt, February 14. 

The woman who lives in the House of the Madonna is an un- 
conscionable old scalawag. Not that you would ever suspect it 
to look at her, for with her round rosy face, her smooth parted hair 
and her comfortably rotund figure she resembles nothing so much 
as somebody's genial and respected grandmother. Yet the facts in 
the case remain. She sells doped wine to the soldiers at ruinous 
prices and she sells at forbidden hours. Moreover we have reason 
to suspect that at odd times she carries on an utterly illicit com- 
merce. According to our hostess, when the time from the last pay 
day grows too long, certain soldiers are not above smuggling in 
their extra shoes and shirts to her, and she pays them back in 
drinks. 

This morning while I was at breakfast she came bouncing in and 
proceeded to fill the house with lamentations. Last night a tipsy 



66 GONCOURT 

soldier had stolen the key to her front door! Then she delved into 
history for my benefit, recounting how, some weeks before, two sol- 
diers, having sent her out of the room on an errand, had pro- 
ceeded to rob her till, the sum amounting to almost three hundred 
francs! 

"Oh! lis sont des monstres, des cochonsl" she wailed. 

Whereat I, with some asperity, remarked that if the French 
people wouldn't sell drink to the Americans, the soldiers wouldn't 
become zig-zag and do such things. Immediately she became con- 
ciliatory. Of course, everyone knew that there were good people 
and bad people in every nation, but certainly! Then she changed 
the subject abruptly, demanding; why, why in the name of common 
sense did I do anything so contrary to all the dictates of reason 
as to sleep with my window open? 

Last night, as Mr. K. and I were coming home from the canteen, 
the door of the cafe opposite was suddenly opened and a man's fig- 
ure appeared, half pushed, half thrown outside. The door slammed 
shut, — it was long after closing hour for the cafe, — the figure fell 
like a log to the ground. We watched a minute to see the fellow 
pick himself up, but he lay motionless. It was a freezing night. 
Mr. K. went over to investigate. The man was in a drunken stupor. 

"You go along," he called to me, "I've got to get this fellow 
home." 

I left reluctantly. Subsequently Mr. K. told me the night's his- 
tory. After considerable coaxing, he had finally succeeded in ex- 
tracting the information that the boy belonged to F Company. 
So to F Company barracks, a good half-mile north of the canteen, 
they had proceeded, Mr. K. hah dragging, half carrying the fellow 
who was head and shoulders taller than he, and broad to boot. 

When they had nearly reached their journey's end, Mr. K. by 
this time fairly in a state of collapse, his burden suddenly baulked. 
The barracks evidently didn't look like home to him. Mr. K. began 
to have a sickening sense of something gone wrong. At last the 
wretch drowsily recalled the fact that he didn't belong to F Com- 
pany at all, but to I Company far on the other side of town. So 



THE DOUGHBOYS 67 

around they turned and back through town they crawled until 
finally they arrived at I Company's abiding-place; and this time 
the derelict was satisfied. 

Indeed a walk home from the canteen at night with Mr. K. at 
any time is likely to prove an adventure. For should we meet a 
boy who has had more than is "good for him" and is in an irritable 
mood, we must stop and talk with him, in order, as Mr. K 's theory 
puts it, to divert his mind. " Get them thinking about something 
else," is his slogan. The other night we stood out in the sleety 
drizzle until my feet fairly froze solid into the freezing mud, carry- 
ing on polite conversations with two boys who had just been put 
out of the House of the Madonna and were in a state of mind to 
wreck the town. One of them Mr. K. got started on the subject 
of taking French lessons. He was ambitious to study French he 
explained and would Mr. K. kindly arrange for a teacher and a 
course of lessons? I listened with one ear; here was the first man I 
had found in France who expressed an earnest desire to learn French 
and he was tipsy! The other one, evidently ashamed, explained to 
me at length how he hadn't wanted to get drunk, the trouble was 
that he was just naturally "dishgushted with this country, just 
dishgushted." And that it seems to me is the whole thing in two 
words. The boys are "just dishgushted." Considering it all, who 
can blame them? 

Goncourt, February 15. 

The M. P.s who live in the second story of the Guard-House 
are my good friends. They help sweep out the hut often in the 
mornings and when they make taffy in their mess kits they bring 
me some. These M. P.s are in reality cavalrymen detached from 
their regiment for the time being in order to do police duty. As 
far as I can see, there seems to be no special hard feeling between 
them and the doughboys. 

One slim young M. P. in particular is a crony of mine. He keeps 
me informed as to the gossip of the town. He tells me how the 
French women who run cafes, our neighbor of the House of the 



68 GONCOURT 

Madonna among them, seek to curry favor with the law in Gon- 
court, by bringing him out coffee and sandwiches as he walks his 
beat in the middle of the night; and how, the other night after 
closing hour, he put his head inside the door of one of these cafes 
to be greeted by a frantic shriek of "Feenish! FeenishI" from the 
hostess, only to find, when he insisted on entering, a crowd of dough- 
boys making merry in the back-room; how he took their names and 
then was inspired to look at their "dog tags" in confirmation and 
found that not one of the names agreed! He tells me about the 
cross old Frenchman whose beehives have been stealthily, inexpli- 
cably, disappearing one by one, in spite of the fact that the French- 
man had tied his unfortunate and much suffering dog underneath 
the hives to guard them; until now the old gentleman had taken to 
sitting up nights with a shot-gun in order to watch the remaining 
ones. "He's a kind o' snoopy old man and nobody likes him. I 
reckon the boys are taking his beehives just to spite him." He 
tells me about the old lady who wants to marry him to her daughter; 
but chiefly he tells me, — under the strictest oath of secrecy, — the 
latest development in the case of the old woman whom he suspects 
of being a spy. I advise him to hand the matter over to the In- 
telligence Officer, but no, he must have the honor of catching her 
red-handed himself. It's quite like reading a detective story in in- 
stallments. 

The other night while I was talking to one of the M. P.s in the 
canteen, we heard a shot up the street. The next moment another 
M. P. appeared at the door. After the exchange of a few whispered 
words, the two of them ran out of the hut, and as they went, I saw 
them both draw their revolvers. Fifteen minutes later the dough- 
boys coming into the canteen brought a ghastly tale. There had 
been a fight between the M. P.s and the soldiers. The M. P.s had 
shot and killed two. "Yes, so-help-me-God, it's the truth!" The 
narrator had himself seen the two slain doughboys lying in the 
street; one had been shot through the head, the other through the 
heart. So the story went around. We went to bed that night with 
a dull sense of horror hanging over us. 



THE DOUGHBOYS 69 

The next morning I confronted my friend the M. P. with the 
story. Then I learned the true version. He had been on his beat 
not far from the church, when down a dark alley he had heard 
sounds of a tremendous fracas. In spite of the fact that he didn't 
have his stick with him he had plunged down the alley to come 
upon "a bunch of wops beating each other over the head with 
beer bottles.'' When they caught sight of the M. P. they had 
quickly abandoned their family disagreement in order to turn upon 
the intruder. He had shot his revolver into the air and this had 
been enough to frighten them into taking to their heels. The two 
fellows who had been seen lying on the ground were the casualties 
resulting from the bottle-fight: they had been stunned and gashed 
so badly as to bleed a good deal, but were later patched up with 
complete success at the hospital. 

Indeed life at Goncourt is seldom unrelieved by incident. Last 
night I was sitting by our open window reading — the Gendarme 
was out — after my return from the hut, when I heard an angry 
voice snarl something abusive directly beneath me; a moment later 
a fusillade began. I jumped for the candle, blew it out, then stood 
close against the wall. After a minute the shots ceased; immedi- 
ately excited people began to pour into the street. I heard the 
M. P.s pounding on the door of the House Across the Way, de- 
manding information; I leaned from the window and told them 
what I knew. All the French people in the neighborhood stood out 
in the street and chattered excitedly for hours afterward it seemed. 
This morning Madame told us what had happened. In the house 
next door lives a tall and handsome girl. A sergeant suitor of hers, 
crazy with jealousy and cognac, had shot wildly at a rival entering 
her door, emptying his automatic, fortunately without effect. 

Goncourt, February 16. 
Twice a week each one of us goes to pay a visit at the local hos- 
pital. This is a depressing place — two large dingy rooms in what 
was once, to judge from the inscription over the door, some sort 
of ecclesiastical school. We take the boys magazines and news- 



7 o G0NC0URT 

papers, oranges and jam. This week I had a new idea. I would 
read aloud to them. In the Bourmont warehouse I came across 
a volume of W. W. Jacobs' short stories. Here was just the thing, 
I thought, such simple slap-stick humour must appeal to the most 
unsophisticated understanding. 

I hurried to the hospital with my prize. The orderlies, not ex- 
pecting a lady visitor, were in the midst of a Black Jack game. Red 
and flustered, one lad tried to hide the little heaps of money on 
the floor by standing on them; I pretended not to see. Yes, they 
thought it would be all right if I should read to the patients. They 
went ahead to the ward to announce me. All the cots were full, 
making sixteen invalids in all. I selected a story — an old favorite, 
I was sure it would prove irresistible — and started to read. The 
story tells of an eccentric skipper with a fad for doctoring. One 
by one, his crew, realizing his weakness, develop mysterious mala- 
dies. They are excused from duty, put to bed, petted and cossetted. 
Finally the mate becomes desperate. He guarantees that he will 
cure them all; the skipper is sceptical but allows him a free hand. 
The mate sets to work to compound some "medicine," a wonder- 
ful and fearful brew made of ink, vinegar, kerosene and bilge- water. 
After a few doses, presto! the crew is hale and hearty once again. 

I read with all the animation I could muster, and to me the story 
had never appeared funnier, but try my hardest, I couldn't seem 
to "get it over." Not a chuckle, not a grin lightened my solemn 
audience. They were utterly, blankly, unresponsive. I began 
to wonder if it were possible that not one of them could understand 
English. At last I ended. As I closed the book a whoop of de- 
light went up from the orderlies; 

"That's you all over, Johnny!" 

"Gee, that guy must have wrote that story about you, Slim." 

"Say, Miss, can't you let us have the recipe for that medicine? 
We need it in our business." 

The invalids grinned sulkily. In one awful moment I realized 
what I had done. 

"Of course," I stammered, "this wasn't meant to have any per- 



THE DOUGHBOY 71 

sonal application!" But the mischief was already done. There 
was nothing to do but to retire with dignity. 

However, I couldn't bear to give up my scheme entirely. Today 
I went again; this time having carefully selected my story. To 
my astonishment the ward proved empty, all except for three boys 
who were crouching on the floor shooting craps; I drew back. 

"Perhaps they would rather not be disturbed." 

"They ought to be in bed anyway," growled the orderly, and 
chased the patients back to their cots. 

I read to them ; there was no way out of it. They listened politely 
to the end, but all the while I felt they were longing to resume their 
interrupted game. Tonight I expressed my surprise over the de- 
serted ward to Captain X. He roared at my innocence. 

"You didn't expect to find any fellows in hospital today did you? 
Why, this is Saturday, and there isn't any drill tomorrow!" 

Goncourt, February 18. 

Every day we must go to see how the new hut is progressing. 
This involves wading through a wilderness of mud. I had thought 
that Bourmont had taught me everything that one could learn 
about French mud this side of the trenches, but Goncourt has 
shown me that it has possibilities hitherto undreamed. 

The new hut is on the far edge of the town, on the east bank of 
the Meuse. Near it are grouped the barracks of the Milk Bat- 
talion, so called not because, as I first supposed, it is composed of 
heavy drinkers, but because it is comprised of Companies I, K, L, 
and M. These barracks, which were bequeathed to us by the 
French, are, the boys tell me, infested with vermin. In the mess- 
hall of Company M we hold our weekly movie-shows and our 
occasional concerts. 

The hut, which is very large, and shipped here in sections, goes 
up slowly. Army details are proverbial in their ability to consume 
time. Then we are constantly being held back by shortage of 
materials; lumber and nails and such things being desperately hard 
to obtain in France at present. Not long ago the divisional Con- 



72 GONCOURT 

struction Man, who is a young fellow with poor eyes and consider- 
able initiative, was driven to the desperate resort of appropriating 
French Army lumber. For a while all went well, then the thefts 
grew too bold, and the Construction Man was summoned before 
the French colonel in command. As the colonel knew English, 
and so could not be put off by any " no compris" bluff, the Construc- 
tion Man had a pretty bad quarter hour of it, but in the end was 
let off with a warning. 

The window frames of the hut are to be filled in with vitex, a 
curious glass substitute, which looks like a thin celluloid glaze over 
very fine meshed wire. It is only slightly transparent, rather fragile 
and very costly but it does admit the light, in this respect being 
far better than the oiled cloth in use in most barracks. When the 
vitex is cut to fit the frames, many odd scraps are left over and these 
I have been distributing among the boys so they can substitute 
them for the old newspapers or sacking now in vogue for billet 
windows. 

If they only could hurry up that hut! 

" You wait and see," say the boys; " just as soon as that hut is 
finished we'll be moving. That's always the way with this regiment. 
Sure as you five, when that hut's done, we'll be off for the front." 

And it begins to look as if this might come true. 

"Do you really think so?" I asked Mr K. today. 

"There's no telling," he replied. "Perhaps. But anyway the 
boys will know we did our best." 

Meanwhile the state of the men is worse than ever. An order has 
been issued in Goncourt that no soldier may enter a civilian house 
without a special permit. The reason given is that certain of the 
townspeople have been illegally selling the men strong drink. The 
soldiers, however, declare bitterly that the real reason is that the 
officers wish to have a clear field with the village damsels. 

Goncourt, February 21. 
We have had our first taste of the trenches; these are not real 
trenches to be sure but simply practice trenches which lie on the 



THE DOUGHBOYS 73 

hilly uplands west of Goncourt. For two days we have been in a 
tumult with a dress rehearsal of manceuvers at the front. The 
whole brigade in battle array has passed under our window. 
Colonels and soup-kitchens, mules and majors, supply trains, am- 
bulances, machine-guns, everything. Yesterday as Company F 
was starting on its hike to the trenches, word came that the mules 
who pulled their field-kitchen were indisposed. Company F had 
no mind to eat corn-willy and hard bread for dinner. They seized 
the soup wagon and pulled it by hand, all the way up the hills. 
Meeting their major on the way, they shouted in unison; "The 
mules went on sick report and got marked quarters. We went 
on sick report and they marked us duty." But they got their 
dinner hot. 

Tonight I heard the sad tale of Mr. B. the new secretary at 
Saint Thiebault. Company A had marched off to spend the day in 
the trenches. Mr. B. had an inspiration; he filled a large suit-case 
full of chocolate and cigarettes: hailed a passing ambulance and 
set out to carry first aid to Company A in its ordeal in the trenches. 
Unluckily neither Mr. B. nor the driver knew just where the field 
of operations lay. Two miles north of Goncourt Mr. B. got out 
and started to " cut across lots." It was raining; he waded through 
swamps, he scratched through thickets, he wallowed in ploughed 
fields, with that suit case which must have weighed a good eighty 
pounds growing heavier at every step. There being no sun to 
guide him, he got lost and wandered about in circles. Finally, 
after several hours, he arrived in a state of collapse at the field 
of manceuveurs. Then instead of A Company he encountered an- 
other company, a perfectly strange company; they demanded 
chocolate and he didn't have the heart to deny them. After the 
last cake of chocolate and the last package of cigarettes had dis- 
appeared an officer came up, an officer from still another company, 
and proceeded to tell Mr. B. in very plain language what he thought 
of him for leaving his men out. And when that officer had done 
with Mr. B. an officer from the company which had been fed came 
up in an awful temper and "bawled out" Mr. B. because forsooth 



74 GONCOURT 

his men had made such a mess, throwing away the chocolate wrap- 
pers that when the others left, his company would have to stay 
behind to " police up" the trenches! 

Poor Mr. B ! My heart goes out to him. 

This evening as we were about to close the canteen, my friend, 
the mule-skinner from Texas appeared in the hut. He had a sort 
of a weak-in-the-knees expression on his face. 

"What's the matter?" 

"Met the Old Man," he answered ruefully,— the ' 'Old Man" 
is the general in command of the division — "Gee! but he sure did 
give me some bawlin' out!" 

"But why?" 

He explained that his sergeant had misunderstood orders and 
told him to go out in his usual rig. The general, encountering the 
mule-skinner without his proper war-paint, had expressed his mind 
to him on the matter. 

"Jumpin' Jupiter! but the langwidge that that old bird used! 
I sure will hand it to him! Why, my ears ain't done burnin' yet!" 
And he shook his head like a man half dazed. 

"What did he say?" 

The mule-skinner grew red as a beet, stared at me horrified. 

"I couldn't repeat it, ma'am! I couldn't repeat nary word of it!" 

That a general should so scandalize a mule-skinner, and a Texas 
mule-skinner at that, by his address, was so intriguing to my fancy 
that I laughed all the way home. 

We have a new colonel; he has declared that the regiment is 
not fit for the front, and so has laid out a two weeks' programme 
of gruelling hikes and intensive training, in order at the eleventh 
hour to try to jack us up to standard. 

The Gendarme leaves tomorrow to go en permission. 

Goncourt, February 25. 
If I were God I would lay a blight on every grape-vine in France; 
then I would sink every still, wine press, distillery and brewery to 
the bottom of the sea. 



THE DOUGHBOYS 75 

We have had pay-day. It happened Friday. The total results 
didn't make themselves evident immediately; it was instead a 
cumulative effect, a crescendo, beginning Friday and reaching its 
climax yesterday. On these three days, out of the twenty-five 
hundred men stationed here, twenty-four hundred and ninety-three, 
I could take my oath, have come into the canteen and leaned over 
the counter, drunk; — that is to say, visibly and undeniably under 
the influence of liquor. When a lad, as some half dozen did, — 
those composing the regular attendance in the group about the 
fire, — came into the canteen entirely and unmistakably sober, one 
welcomed him as a drowning man does a spar. For a moment one 
had come in touch with something stable in a reeling world. 

Out of a company of two hundred and fifty last night ninety were 
capable of standing Retreat. 

I have learned to gauge the stages. When a man looks you 
squarely in the eye and declares vociferously, "Never took a drink 
in all my life! " he is very drunk indeed. And there is always some- 
one nearby to wink and comment; "He must have joined the gang 
that pours it down with a funnel. " 

Saturday night a very red-faced lad came up to the counter 
and insisted on conversing; from each pocket in his rain-coat pro- 
truded a long-necked bottle. I stood it for a few minutes, then: 

"Please/ I said, "won't you take those bottles out of here? 
I just hate to see them." 

"Bottles!" he expostulated. " What do you mean, bottles!" 

"I mean just those." I pointed. 

"Why I ain't got a bottle on me!" he burst out indignantly, 
fairly glaring at me. Seeing it was hopeless, I edged away toward 
the other end of the counter, leaving him standing there, a perfect 
picture of outraged and insulted virtue, with those bottles bristling 
all over him. 

The whole town is pervaded by a warm glow of geniality. Boys 
that used to nod shyly in answer to your " Good morning" now lean 
from their loft windows as you pass to call a greeting. Last night, 
my friend the M. P. tells me, he heard a racket in one of the sheep- 



76 GONCOURT 

folds up on our street. Going to investigate he met a "bunch o* 
drunken wops" coming out of the door, every man of them carry- 
ing a struggling sheep under each arm. He shouted at them; they 
dropped the sheep and fled. 

The French find it all vastly amusing. "Beauoup zig zag" they 
cry. It means, I suppose, riches for them. 

And yet in all this orgy I have not yet encountered a single word 
of disrespect, nor heard one objectionable expression uttered. Last 
night I caught an angry splutter from the crowd in front of the 
counter. One boy, evidently a shade less tipsy, had admonished 
another boy apparently a shade more so, to be careful of his lan- 
guage out of respect for me. "Whu'd 'y° u think? D'you think 
I ain't got sense enough to know how to talk when there's an Ameri- 
can lady present? " For a moment it looked as if there might be a 
fight. 

Meanwhile the guard-house, the real guard-house, is so crowded 
that they have had to put duck-boards across the rafters for the 
prisoners to sleep on. 

From a nearby town where part of another regiment is stationed 
come even more startling stories. Certain officers there went so 
wild that they started to blow up the town with hand grenades. 
And one of them coming into the Y. held up the secretary at the 
point of his pistol until he sold him — instead of the ordinary 
allowance of one or two packages — several cartons of his favorite 
brand of cigarettes. 

The new colonel is said to be horrified. But what could he ex- 
pect? Take an odd lot of twenty-five hundred boys, remove them 
from every decent restraining influence, hike them all day through 
the interminable mud and rain until they drop by the roadside, 
bring them back at night to dark, cold, damp, filthy, vermin-ridden 
lofts and stables, add the nerve strain of the imminent prospect 
of their first time at the front, close every door to them except the 
door of the cafe, give them money; — what could anyone expect? 



THE DOUGHBOYS 77 

Goncourt, February 27. 

My friend Pat is in the hospital; not the local hospital, but 
Base 18 situated at Bazoilles, some six miles to the north of Gon- 
court. This afternoon, having our time free between one and 
four, Mr. K and I decided to go to call on him. 

"Are we going to walk?" I asked. 

"Oh we'll get a lift; one always does.' , 

But the lift didn't heave in sight until we were half way there; 
then it was an ambulance that slowed down in answer to our 
signals. 

"Give us a ride?" 

"Sure, if you aren't afraid of the mumps." 

I was, dreadfully afraid. But Mr. K. wasn't, he had already 
had them, on both sides. I hesitated, then decided to take a 
chance. We rode into Bazoilles in an ambulance full of mumps. 

As for Pat, we hadn't an idea in what sort of shape we might 
find him. Once, Mr. K. told me, he had come upon Pat in one 
of his visits to the Saint Thiebault infirmary. Pat was lying on 
a cot with his eyes closed and a sanctified look of patient suffering 
upon his face. 

"Why what's wrong with you, Pat?" 

"Ssh!" Pat squinted about to see that neither doctor nor orderly 
was within ear-shot, then an Irish grin spread over his impudent 
features. "Nothin' at all," he whispered joyously, "just no thin* 
at all!" 

But this time we found Pat's ailment real enough. He was 
in the "bone ward" with a badly broken wrist. 

"How did it happen?" we inquired. 

"Sure an' it happened this way," and he told us both the offi- 
cial and the confidential versions. Confidentially, Pat's wrist 
had been broken by a blow from an M. P.'s billy in an after-pay- 
day argument at Saint Thiebault. Officially it had been broken 
two days later in the barracks by an accidental knock from a 
gun-barrel. Pat had hiked and drilled with a broken wrist for two 
solid days in order to be able to claim that he had been disabled in 



78 GONCOURT 

the line of duty\ After the second day, convinced that the en- 
counter with the M. P. was sufficiently a matter of past history 
to be discredited, Pat had reported at Sick Call with his trumped- 
up tale and had as usual gotten by. Now as he lay on his cot he 
was occupying himself by conjuring up visions of the party to 
which he and his buddy were going to treat that M. P. just as 
soon as he (Pat) should get his hospital discharge. 

As we talked I noticed a lad who was walking about the ward 
with his right hand done up in bloody bandages. He looked 
self-conscious and embarrassed as if he half hoped, half feared 
to be recognized. I caught Pat's eye, his voice dropped to a 
whisper. 

" That's Philip R. Don't you remember him?" 

Of course! I smiled at Philip, but he turned away and wouldn't 
come to speak to me. Mr. K. went over to him; they talked for 
a long while in undertones. Later I heard the whole pitiful story. 
He had been drinking, the terror that was haunting him had 
suddenly gripped. He had taken his rifle and shot himself through 
his right hand, mutilating it, in order that he might not be sent 
to the front. Placed under arrest on suspicion, his nerve had 
utterly given way. He had made a full confession. It was likely 
to go hard with him. 

While Mr. K. was listening to Philip, Pat was telling me about 
the regiment of southern negro engineers who had come to Baz- 
oilles to help build the new hospital. Every time there was an 
air-raid alarm, Pat declared, they knelt down and prayed by 
companies. 

I emptied out my musette bag onto Pat's cot. Pat looked at 
the oranges, dates, chocolates and cigarettes that we had brought, 
then took a squint along the hungry-looking ward. 

" Well, I guess I'll get a taste," he said. 

He was "in soft" he told us. The nurses let him help serve the 
meals. He had free run of the kitchen and all the milk that he 
wanted to drink. Yet he was already chafing at the restraint 
and in his wicked head he was scheming schemes. Some day in 



THE DOUGHBOYS 79 

the not-too-distant future he was going to give the hospital guards 
the slip, make a night of it, and paint "Bazooie" red. 

Tonight word reached us that a Y. M. C. A. woman worker 
has been killed in Paris in an air-raid. She was sick and they had 
sent her to the Hopital Claude-Bernard. This time the bombs 
found it. 

Goncourt, March 2. 

The new hut is opened. Finished or unfinished, we made up 
our minds that we would open that hut Saturday night, and open 
it we did. The last two days have been fairly frantic. Yesterday 
we washed up; today we dried out and decorated. The cleaning 
was the worst of it. The hut, as I have hinted, is a sort of island 
in a sea of mud. Consequently as the building went up, the floor, 
walls, counter, ceiling, everything was splotched, streaked and 
plastered with dirt. Thursday night as I looked around the hut 
my heart sank. The place was a sight. 

"You can't do anything about it," they told me. 

"But something has got to be done!" 

Friday morning arrived a detail of eight prisoners from the 
guard-house. They had come to scrub. The guard in charge 
took his stand, leaning against one of the pillars, his loaded rifle 
in his hands; to see that no one escaped was his only responsibility, 
the rest was up to me. My detail proved a sullen, stubborn lot, 
slouching, cursing under their breath, all their self-respect turned 
to a smouldering rebellion; after the first few minutes I saw just 
how much work left to themselves they would be likely to ac- 
complish. So I told them in a matter-of-fact way just how things 
stood: that we had promised to open the hut the next day, that it 
was, as they could see, in a frightful mess, that I realized they 
were up against a stiff job, but I did so hope that we could put 
it through. Then I got a pail and a scrubbing-brush and went 
out and scrubbed side by side with them. It is of course strictly 
against the rules to talk to prisoners, but all the while I worked 
I "jollied" my "jail-birds" for all my wits were worth. I ad- 



8o GONCOURT 

mired ecstatically the spots which they had scrubbed, I moaned 
in despair over the unscrubbed places. Inside of an hour the 
prisoners were all grinning cheerfully as they worked like beavers. 
When the guard was looking the other way I sneaked them cigar- 
ettes. By night the hut was very damp and somewhat streaky, 
but it would pass, at least by candle-light. I didn't care though 
my arms were so lame I could hardly lift them, and my hands 
in ruins. 

"I congratulate you," said the new Secretary, "I never thought 
it could be done." 

"If only nobody looks at the ceiling! " 

For the ceiling was beyond our reach, and back and forth over 
every one of its boards had tramped the hob-nailed boots of the 
A. E. F. and every step had left its muddy print. As I looked 
I thought; if we only had the signatures to put beside each foot- 
print, what a fascinating autograph collection it would make! 

Today we spent in a mad tear, making the hut beautiful and 
moving our effects over from the " Guard-House." The moving 
was accomplished by the aid of the Wall- Eyed Boy and his donkey. 
These are two of Goncourt's leading citizens, the donkey, an 
ancient moth-eaten beast, being particularly intimately known 
to a certain group of doughboys who would joyfully murder 
him. His stable is directly beneath the loft in which they are 
billeted and every morning, prompt as an alarm clock, at 4 A. M. 
that donkey brays, and brays until the soundest sleeper is awak- 
ened. The Wall-Eyed Boy's name is Martin, and as a donkey 
in France is slangily called un Martin, as we call a mule "Maud," 
the two go under the title of Les Deux Martins. When les Deux 
Martins and I went trudging along the muddy streets of Goncourt, 
side by side, with the little tippy cart loaded with canteen truck 
bumping along behind, the M. P.s thought it a rare joke. "I 
wish Sister Susy could see you now," called one. 

The last few hours were spent frantically decorating. Our color 
scheme is red and blue. This came about through accident rather 
than intention. We had a bolt of turkey-red cotton bunting for 



THE DOUGHBOYS 81 

curtains, only to discover that this did not darken the lighted 
windows sufficiently to comply with the now strictly enforced 
aeroplane regulations. So I asked a secretary starting for Paris 
to bring me a bolt of black cambric in order to make a set of inner 
supplementary curtains. The secretary returning, brought bright 
blue; black, on account of the demand for mourning, had proved 
too expensive. At first I was non-plussed, but then discovered that 
the bright red and blue made rather a jolly combination. So each 
one of our many windows is now giddy with red and blue draperies 
and the seat that runs all around our writing room is brave with 
blue and red cushions (stuffed, if the truth must be told, with 
shavings!) Between each two windows is tacked one of my stun- 
ning big French war posters, the long counter is covered with red- 
checked oil-cloth, a bouquet of flags flies from the proscenium arch 
over the stage which, for the occasion, is banked beautifully with 
evergreens. Altogether we present rather the appearance of a 
perpetual Fourth of July celebration, but then who cares? If one 
can't be aesthetic one can atleast be gay, and it's anything to take 
one's mind off the mud! 

The Gendarme came back from her leave tonight just in time 
for the Grand Opening. This took place at seven o'clock. The 
hall was packed to the last inch. As one boy said; " There's plenty 
of room for me, but there ain't none for the buttons on my coat." 
There was a reason for this. The new colonel was to make a speech 
and he had advised all the officers and non-coms, in the whole 
regiment to be present. I caught a glimpse of Company A wedged 
in among the suffocating mass. Everything, I understand, went 
off very nicely; there was much music by the band and somebody 
sang Danny Deever very thrillingly, but I was too busy in the 
kitchen to pay much attention. The new Secretary had wanted me 
to sit on the platform, but after a three days' debate, he had finally 
agreed to let me off, and luckily, for the minute the last note of the 
S. S. B. had sounded we were ready to start handing out the hot 
chocolate and cookies over the counter to the mob. When every- 
one else had been fed the colonel himself appeared back of the 



82 GONCOURT 

counter, to graciously accept a cup of chocolate, and make himself 
generally charming. 

When the last guest had gone and we were getting ready to 
shut up the hut for the night, the Chief who had come over from 
Bourmont for the occasion drew me aside, looking solemn. 

"I have a question to put to you." 

"What is it?" 

"The division leaves for the front within a short while. Do 
you wish to go with them?" 

"Of course! "said I. 

Goncourt, March 8. 

This week has gone by in a whirl. Because it was our first and 
presumably our last week in the big hut we wanted to make it just 
as nice as was humanly possible. And this hasn't been an easy task 
because with the regiment putting on the last touches before they go 
to the front, there hasn't been a bit of spare man-power available 
to help us; and the mere problem of keeping that huge place any- 
thing like clean has almost swamped us. After mess at night, to 
be sure, we have no lack of assistance. The boys swarm into the 
little kitchen in droves, eager to help stir the chocolate, or cut the 
bread for the sandwiches. If only ten out of every dozen would 
be content to stay the other side of the counter, it would simplify 
matters, but much as they may be underfoot one hasn't the heart 
to turn them out. Those who can't get into the kitchen hang 
about the doors, looking in, teasing for a "hand-out" of bread and 
jam. "I'm just so hungry," sighed a lad plaintively today, looking 
at me out of the corner of his eyes, "I could eat the jamb off the 
door!" 

We have a Frenchwoman to help us in the kitchen. She is a 
treasure, shy and bright-eyed as a brown bird, and so tiny that we 
have to set a packing-box by the stove for her to stand on when 
she stirs the chocolate. She is deaf and speaks patois, so between 
her strange French and mine still stranger we have droll times 
making each other understand. Yet, none the less, she and the 
boys manage to keep up a running fire of badinage and when they 



THE DOUGHBOYS 83 

become too rowdy, the tiny thing turns ridiculously bellicose and 
threatens to whip them all with her chocolate paddle. At night 
we all go home together and one tall lad must always come along 
in order to help Madame over the road of a thousand mud holes 
that leads from the hut to the highway, lest she be drowned in 
transit. She carries a funny little gasolene lamp that gives about 
as much light as an ambitious fire-fly and all the way to the main 
road one can hear her moaning; "Mon Dieu } quel chemin! Mon 
Dieu, quel cheminl" 
This has been our week's programme: 



Sunday. 


Hot chocolate and cookies 




Religious Service with special music 




Song Service. More chocolate 


Monday. 


French Classes 




Hot chocolate and jam sandwiches 


Tuesday. 


Boxing and Wrestling Matches 




Hot chocolate and sardine sandwiches 


Wednesday. 


Band Concert 




Hot chocolate and jam sandwiches 


Thursday. 


Movies 




Hot chocolate and cookies 


Friday. 


Sing Fest with Solos 




Hot chocolate and jam sandwiches 


Saturday. 


Stunt Programme 




Canned fruit and cookies 



The hut has been filled every night, hundreds and hundreds of 
soldiers, the auditorium packed and the writing-room holding at 
least a hundred more, while the chocolate line, coiling and curling 
about like a monster snake, has for hours seemed absolutely end- 
less. We have worked out a system for the chocolate serving — 
the Gendarme is cashier, taking the money and making change, 
fifty centimes or nine cents for a cup of chocolate and a sandwich, 
or six spice cookies, or four fig ones. One boy ladles out the choco- 
late. I push the cups over the counter, another boy hands out 



84 GONCOURT 

the cookies, a third gathers up the dirty cups and carries them to 
the kitchen, where three or four others are busy washing and wiping 
them, while Heaven only knows how many more are around the 
stove, helping Madame stir the next kettleful, opening milk cans, 
or dipping water into a third container. Thus we keep the line 
merrily wagging along. 

Last night, quite unknown to the men, Pershing himself came to 
town, whirled in after dark in his big limousine and whirled away 
again as suddenly and secretly as he had arrived. He came to 
give the officers final instructions as to their conduct at the front. 

The first faint wistful scents of Spring are in the air. This morn- 
ing Madame brought to our room a tiny bouquet of snow-drops. 
And one hears from Saint Thiebault a rumour of early violets. 

Goncourt, March io. 
This morning shortly after I reached the hut, one of the men 
from the Bourmont office came in with a note for me, it read: 

My dear Miss 



I am glad to be able to tell you more or less con- 
fidentially that you will probably go to the front very shortly. 
You had better have everything ready so you could leave on short 
notice any time after tomorrow noon. 

Very sincerely yours, 

Enclosed in the envelope was a little slip headed Suggestions for 
Men going to the Front. It began "Go light, take no trunk," and 
ended " We provide helmets, gas masks, etc." The note was dated 
yesterday. 

I left the canteen and hurried back here to my billet to pack, 
while the Gendarme, who does not wish to go with the division but 
prefers to stay back and be reassigned, remained at the hut. What 
with sorting and mending things, the packing took all afternoon. 
What to leave behind in storage and what to take is no end of a 
question. Unfortunately the Suggestions were compiled with a 
view strictly to masculine necessities. 



THE DOUGHBOYS 85 

It has been a grey dismal afternoon. A melancholy donkey in 
somebody's back-yard has kept up an incessant braying. " He does 
not please himself at Goncourt," explained Madame. "He is a 
Saint Thiebault donkey. 3 ' Meanwhile half the regiment, it seems, 
has strayed by under my open window. I never knew before how 
consistently and persistently profane the A. E. F. could be when 
left to its own devices. The amazing part of it is; — since this seems 
to be their natural style of expression, how do they manage to 
slough it all and talk with such perfect prunes and prisms propriety 
in the canteens? 

At supper time we were surprised by a Concert Party which had 
arrived today unexpectedly in this area. We were particularly 
glad to have them as the nervous tension among the boys is marked 
enough to make us welcome anything to divert their attention. 
We could have the regular Sunday evening service first, we decided, 
and then the concert to finish off with. The Concert Party came to 
supper at our mess. There was an ornamental Russian violinist, 
male, an American accompanist, also male, and a little French 
actress-singer. The minute we laid eyes on her we knew that the 
concert would be a success. She was all frills and frippery; lace, 
pink-rose buds and pale blue silk, with yellow curls and great blue 
eyes peering from beneath a quaint little rose-wreathed poke bon- 
net; an amazing vision of femininity to appear suddenly in the mud 
and dingy squalor of Goncourt! 

The family Peirut was in a great state of mind over such dis- 
tinguished visitors. They brought out food enough to feed the 
company a week, and kept hovering about the table, urging the 
dishes on our guests and emitting little wails of dismay when 
any one of the artists refused to eat enough for all three. 

I stayed at our billet to finish up my packing, and went over 
to the hut late in the evening. The concert was half finished. 
As we anticipated, the little singer had made a hit. She gave 
some French songs, accompanying them with clever pantomine. 
Then she sang Huckleberry Finn and Oh Johnny! As the phrase 
has it, she "got them going." She proved a past-mistress in the 



86 GONCOURT 

art of using her eyes. They winked at her and she winked back. 
Every last man in the first six rows was flirting with her, and 
every one was convinced that he was making a hit all his own. 
Several, it was confided to me afterwards, developed matrimonial 
aspirations on the spot. Then a tragic thing occurred. For the 
closing number they must give the Star Spangled Banner. Every- 
body rose, and everybody in duty bound removed their hats. The 
little singer took one wild survey of the audience, gasped, choked, 
then retreated precipitately in order to conceal her giggles. A 
week ago an order was published that the regiment should have 
their hair shaved off before going to the front; — every head in the 
whole auditorium, thus suddenly laid bare, was bald as an egg! 
From latest advices it appears that the troops will start entrain- 
ing the middle of the week. We are going on ahead in order to 
be there to serve them hot chocolate when they detrain after the 
journey. Every one has a different idea where that will be, but 
the best guess seems to be the Luneville sector. What sort of 
conditions we will find at the front I haven't the least idea. I 
missed the special conference held at Bourmont the other day, 
in which instructions and information to the personnel bound 
for the front were given. The driver who was to call for us, failed 
to do so; I set out to walk, only to find on arriving at Bourmont 
that the conference had been cut short, and was already over. 
Nobody has told me a word except to tease me by telling me that 
I will have to have my hair cut off in order to wear a gas-mask. 
Mr. K. amuses himself by predicting cellars and cooties. The 
Peiruts shake their heads and talk about my courage, but I can 
see that they mean folly. As for the Gendarme's friends, Lieut- 
enant Z. warns: "Take my advice, stay out of it. It's a man's 
game out there.' , While Captain X. splutters; "Sending you 
to the front without any gas-drill, it's nothing short of cold-blooded 
murder." Thus do our friends encourage us. 



CHAPTER III 

RATTENTOUT 
THE FRONT 

Bar-le-Duc, March 12. 

It's not to be the Luneville sector after all, it's to be the sector 
just south of Verdun! 

We arrived here at Bar-le-Duc last night after a six-hour trip 
by motor car. Mr. K. came by motor-cycle; most of the other 
men travelled by truck, sitting perched on top of a load of luggage, 
canvas cots, and chocolate boilers. The truck broke down some- 
where en route and never reached Bar-le-Duc until this morning, 
when it rolled in carrying a rather weary-looking lot of passengers. 

Tomorrow we go on to our station behind the lines. Today 
we have spent shopping for supplies. We have bought writing 
paper; materials to make hot chocolate, paying two francs and a 
half apiece or almost fifty cents for a small-sized can of condensed 
milk; and dozens of gross of little jars of confiture. Ever since 
I was a child Bar-le-Duc has meant just the one thing to me, — 
those little glasses of delectable currant preserve which bear its 
label. We went around to the wholesale houses which handle 
the famous Confitures Fins de Bar-le-Duc. The sight of all those 
gleaming rows of glass jars filled with deep crimson or amber- 
colored currants was one that I shan't easily forget. 

Bar-le-Duc is a city which shows the wounds of war. Time 
and again, unfortified, defenceless as she is, she has known the 
terror that flieth by night. Last summer several blocks in the very 
heart of the city were completely demolished by bombs and the 
wilderness of ruins lies there untouched. All over the city great 
black signs are painted on the houses; Cave, Cave voutee, — vaulted 



88 RATTENTOUT 

cellar, — Place Pour 40 Personnes. At the end of the afternoon 
we climbed, Mr. K and I, to the top of the ancient clock-tower 
which stands on the edge of the fortress-citadel of the Dukes of 
Bar, overlooking the city. Just above the clock we came upon a 
tiny platform transformed for the time being into light-house- 
keeping apartments for two poilus who night and day keep watch 
there for enemy aircraft. As we stood on the little balcony out- 
side and looked down on the house-tops of the city spread be- 
neath us, with the little children playing in the streets, a telephone 
bell in the tower tingled. A moment later one of the poilus an- 
nounced; "A squadrille of Gothas has just crossed the lines, 
headed for Paris." 

Alas, poor Paris! Yet the news brought a feeling of relief with 
it. The little children of Bar-le-Duc are safe for the night, it 
seems. The avions are out after bigger game. 

Rattentout, March 14. 

Out from Bar-le-Duc one swings into a separate world, the 
World-Behind-the-Lines. Here one is at the back door of the 
war, as it were. Passing through the half-abandoned villages 
one sees war in its deshabille; you get no sense of the thrill of it, 
nor even of its horrors; only the weary disgust, the stultifying 
stupidity, the unutterable ennui. 

Here everything that moves or lives, it seems, is blue; faded 
blue, dingy blue, purplish or greenish blue perhaps, but blue 
nevertheless. Everywhere the color insists. It streaks along 
the roads in long, broken lines, the meagre trodden villages are 
blotched and patched with it. Indeed the whole horizon, at this 
season of the year, might be expressed in just two tones; the 
almost uniform grey-yellow tint that washes over the fields, the 
rolling hills, the dusty roads, the squalid villages, and the ever- 
insistent poilu-blue. 

You pass by tilled fields labeled Culture Militaire; great grey- 
green aerodromes with flocks of little planes resting in rows beside 
them, in their gay paint resembling nothing in the world so much 



THE FRONT 89 

as dicky birds fresh from the toy shop; and always dotted here 
and there over the open fields, the little lonely graves, sometimes 
hedged in by fences made of sticks and always marked by a grey 
wooden cross on which hangs, in painted tin, the tricolor. Farther 
on you come to the world where men live underground, burrowing 
in the earth like hunted animals. Scattered along the road-side, 
or in rows under the shelter of a hill-slope, everywhere you look, 
are dugouts, some with the entrances covered with pine-boughs, 
others thatched with sticks, still others hidden beneath earth- 
colored camouflages. 

We arrived here last night about dusk. The poilus as we passed 
stared at us as if we were so many lunatics. Rattentout is on the 
right bank of the Meuse, about six miles from the trenches. This 
means for one thing that you must carry a gas-mask with you 
wherever you go. One even sees the little children, what few of 
them are left, trudging about with small-sized masks slung over 
their shoulders. The Y. here is short of masks and as yet M. — 
the only canteen worker besides myself to come with the advance 
guard — and I have none. This morning when the Chief went out 
he hung his mask on a peg in the hall. "If anything happens," 
he said to M. and me, "you two can settle it between you, which 
shall have it." 

Our home here is in a lordly mansion, evidently the Big House 
of the village. French officers were living here before we came. 
The regiment to which they belonged moving out just as we 
arrived, they graciously made over the house to us. The officers 
had started a vegetable garden in the back-yard and this they 
relinquished with deep regret, one young lieutenant fairly having 
tears in his eyes as he took a last survey of his rows of tiny lettuce 
and young cabbages. 

Today is to be given over to house-cleaning, and getting settled. 
Tomorrow the troops are due to begin detraining at the two points 
Landrecourt and Dugny and we are to be there to serve them 
hot chocolate. 

Last night we took our supper at the dingy little house next 



go RATTENTOUT 

door, a surprisingly delicious meal, bread and butter, omelette, 
salad and cocoa. The house next door is one of the half-dozen or 
so in town still inhabited by civilians. The family consists of 
grandmother, mother and little girl of five; the husband is in 
the trenches. The child Pauline is half sick with a feverish cold. 
They could get no medicine, the mother fretted; we promised some 
from Bar-le-Duc. The house itself is painfully unkempt and dirty, 
yet Pauline is always fresh in a spotless white pinafore, her glossy 
hair immaculately brushed. This morning we went to the house 
next door again for bread and coffee. 

"Did you sleep last night?" asked Madame. 

" But yes, — and you? " 

She shook her head. "I was afraid of the Boche aeroplanes. I 
could hear them overhead.' ' 

"But I should think you would be used to them by now." 

"Ah! But that makes no difference!" 

What consideration keeps her here, clinging to the very door- 
step of the war, as it were, hounded as she is, by terrors? Just 
the one reason, I suppose, — that she has nowhere else to go. 

Rattentout, March 15. 

Lafayette, nous voild! The first battalions of the division have 
arrived. 

The car called for us early this morning to take us to Dugny- 
Est where half the men are to detrain. We followed along the east 
bank of the Meuse running parallel to the Canal de UEst. The 
canal was a dismal sight, filled with an endless fine of empty aban- 
doned barges, many of them settling slowly down as if water-logged, 
a few, already sunk, leaving nothing but a bit of prow protruding 
above the water's surface. We ran along the bank for about three 
miles, then swung across the Meuse to Dugny. Dugny-Est is a 
half mile north of Dugny proper, — the terminus of a strip of rail- 
way taken over and run by American engineers. Viewed from the 
detraining tracks the landscape was bleak enough; the morasses 
of the Meuse, strung with barbed-wire beyond, an austere deserted- 



THE FRONT 91 

looking church in the foreground, and, dreariest of all, right under 
the boys' feet as they detrained, almost, a large military grave-yard. 

Arriving at the little stone station-house made over to us for 
the occasion, we found the chocolate already made. Four of the Y. 
men had spent the night there and by dint of stoking the fires all 
night long, as they declared, they had gotten the five huge con- 
tainers hot. The equipment assembled in haste at Bar-le-Duc was 
evidently proving none too satisfactory. 

I had just time to suspend a small American flag from the front 
of the station-house before the first train puffed up the track. 
Nothing I think has ever looked quite so good to me as that old 
American locomotive. It was the first one I had seen in France. 
I wanted to throw my arms around it and hug it. As one of the 
boys said afterwards: "Why, you'd be happy just to lie down on 
the track and let the darned thing run over you." 

I stood under the flag and waved frantically, first to the Ameri- 
can train crew and then, oh joy! to my Company A! There they 
all were, crowded in the open doors of their box cars, " Side-door 
Pullmans" as they call them, Magulligan the prize fighter, comi- 
cally conspicuous with his head done up in a sort of night-cap made 
from a large white handkerchief. The train pulled by, slowed 
down, came to a standstill up the track. We hustled the chocolate 
cans out by the road-side. Company A, the first off the train, 
came marching down the road; each man held out his mess-cup 
and got a dipperf ul of cocoa. 

"Where are we?" they demanded. 

"Four miles south of Verdun. How do you like the scenery?" 

"All right except the grave-yard. That's too handy." 

" Say " spoke up one of the boys, "I heard the mud out here in 
the trenches was pretty deep." 

"Is that so?" 

"Yes they said a feller went in over his ankles there the other 
day." 

"I wouldn't call that very deep!" I bit. 

"Mm, but he went in head-first!" 



92 RATTENTOUT 

I asked one of the corporals how things were going. 

"We were feelin' kind o' lost," he confessed. "Then we looked 
out and saw the old flag and you. After that it seemed just like 
home somehow.' ' 

They marched off down the road looking very business-like and 
military. Next came the other companies belonging to the first 
battalion, and the regimental machine-gun company. These were 
not permitted to stop by the station-house on account of the danger 
of being observed by enemy aircraft, but were halted at a distance 
down the road. We picked up the chocolate cans and chased after 
them. 

When every man in the First Battalion had had a drink, we 
hurried back to the stone-house to get ready for the next train- 
load. As I stirred the chocolate on one of the little stoves set up 
outside, several of the train crew came to talk to me. I was the 
first "real honest- to-God American girl" they had seen in months 
they told me; and they were just as excited over me as I had been 
over their engine. 

If the history of America in the Great War should ever be written 
down in detail, surely one chapter should be given over to a Little 
Iliad of the "Six Bit Railway" that runs from Sommeil to Dugny- 
Est, five kilometers south of Verdun; how, as I had it from the 
lips of one of those engineers, the English took it over from the 
French and tried to run it and failed, how the Canadians took it 

after them and failed too, how then the Engineers fell heir to 

it. How they lived with the French, eating French rations which 
were gall and wormwood to them. How they struggled with an alien 
tongue and finally reduced it to a wierd unholy gibberish which 
was yet somehow intelligible both to the French and to themselves. 
How they came through shell-fire and gas and bombing raids, 
seemingly bearing charmed lives. And how they worked forty-eight 
hours at a stretch whenever the big drives and shifts were on. 

Tonight one of the secretaries told us that, as he was standing 
by the road-side watching while we ladled out the chocolate, one 
of the boys said to him: 



THE FRONT 93 

"I'm thinking of a toast." 

"And what might that be?" 

"God bless American women," the boy answered him. 



Rattentout, March 16. 

When we reached the station-house this morning we found every- 
one agog over the night's events. The detraining had gone on all 
night; at first without incident. All precautions had been taken, 
no one was allowed to so much as light a match. About midnight 
one of the marine soup-kitchens had been unloaded and rolled down 
the road puffing sparks and scattering coals. Some enterprising 
mess sergeant had evidently planned that his men should have a 
hot meal. The French spectators in consternation had followed 
the soup-kitchen down the road, extinguishing the trailing embers, 
but the mischief was already done. There were German planes 
scouting overhead, they noted, evidently, the sparks, and signaled 
the range to the German gunners. Fifteen minutes later a six 
inch shell exploded a few hundred yards from the little stone-house, 
then another and another. One shell had fallen in the very center 
of the grass-plot where Company D had lined up to eat their 
luncheon of cold corn-willy sandwiches and hot chocolate. The 
gas-alarm had been sounded. A mule team had become frantic and 
bolted, encountering the marine band's big base drum, had made 
toothpicks of it. Meanwhile confusion, it seemed, had reigned in 
the little stone-house. One secretary, seizing an article of under- 
wear and putting it on his head in mistake for a helmet, had dashed 
madly up and down the road as the shells fell, and ended by burst- 
ing, in his deshabille, into the private dugout of a French colonel. 

No Americans were hurt, but one poilu had been injured and 
another killed. 

"They have our range now," said everybody. "And look at 
those Boche ballloons, will you?" 

We looked to the northeast; three German observation balloons 
were hanging just above the hills. 



94 RATTENTOUT 

We stirred the chocolate and served it to whatever boys happened 
to be about, boys on detail, drivers of mule-teams. One can, 
having been kept warm all night, had turned. Some bright soul 
suggested that it was the concussion of the shelling that had 
soured the milk, just as thunderstorms sometimes do. Two 
poilus leaned in at the window. 

"What are you doing?" they asked curiously. We explained; 
they shook their heads. "You spoil your soldiers." Then, "Was 
anyone killed last night?" 

"Yes, one Frenchman." 

"Oh that's nothing!" (Ca ne fait rien.) They strolled away. 

The friendly interpreter came in and told us that they were 
about to hold the poilu's funeral. 

A troop-train pulled in. It was loaded with soldiers from my 
own regiment, the Second Battalion. The chocolate was ready, 
smelt delicious. • 

"You can't serve it," they told us. "On account of last night's 
shelling, the troops won't be allowed to stop until they're well 
beyond the town." 

"Isn't there some way we can manage?" we teased. 

"No, they've got our range." 

"Well at least we can say hello to them!" 

We went down to the tracks where the men were spilling out 
of the box cars. They were gathering up their equipment and 
forming in companies in double time. One red-in-the-face ser- 
geant was furiously demanding who in blazes had stolen his 
revolver on him; it was evident that he found the presence of 
ladies sadly hampering to his flow of language. Three companies 
marched off. The last to go was H Company, the company that 
had been billeted on the same street with us at Goncourt. We 
waved and they smiled back at us. They marched down the road, 
disappeared over the brow of the hill. 

We stood chatting with two boys who were on a billeting de- 
tail. 

There was a dull heavy detonation beyond the hills. A moment 



THE FRONT 95 

later a strange whistling screech shrilled over our heads. I stared 
into the air, trying to see — I knew of course it was a shell, but I had 
never thought one would travel so slowly or be quite so noisy about 
it. The whistling shriek passed over us, changed to a dropping 
whine. Down the street there was a thunderous explosion followed 
instantly by a shattering crash. Timbers, tiles, stones, a mass of 
debris splashed for a moment up against the sky. The shell had 
fallen at the cross-roads. I stared at M. I was cold all over. 

"It must have got them," I heard myself whispering. "My 
God! it must have got them!" 

We stared down the road. Everywhere figures in poilu blue and 
some in khaki, were running like rabbits towards the dugouts. 
It seemed to me the uncertainty was more than I could bear. 

"I'm going to go and see." 

"I'll go with you," said M. 

We stopped at the station-house and put on our helmets; then 
we started down the road. Just beyond the 'station-house we 
passed a little cortege of poilus carrying the body of their comrade 
on a stretcher-bier. They were on their way to the church. When 
the first shell came over I had seen the funeral procession waver, 
hesitate, seem uncertain for a few moments whether to proceed 
or to seek shelter, now, their indecision conquered; they were 
continuing their march with what seemed an added dignity. A 
limousine drew up behind us, stopped. In the back seat sat an 
American major. 

"Give you a lift?" 

We climbed in. Half way down the hill another shell shrieked 
over our heads, burst in front of us. We reached the cross-roads. 

"Let us out, please." 

The major stared, them stopped the car. We scrambled out. 
The car whirled off. Two houses lay, crushed heaps of stone. 
In the road were three dead horses and an automobile with a 
crumpled radiator. That was all. Another shell struck, sending 
us cowering against the nearest house-wall. As far as we could 
see the place was utterly deserted, There was nothing to do but 



96 RATTENTOUT 

go back. Half-way up the hill we met a poilu, he was carrying 
an O. D. blouse. He asked us where the wounded American was; 
he had been carried into some house nearby; this was his coat. 
We could of course tell him nothing. The wind which had been 
strong all morning, was filling the air withj)linding clouds of yellow 
dust. The shells were coming over at regular intervals, so many 
minutes between them; they were all falling, it seemed, in the 
vicinity of the cross-roads. A little further up the hill and we began 
to meet mule teams from the supply train driving down. The 
mule-skinners on their high seats looked calm enough, but a num- 
ber of the mules were becoming quite unmanageable. I recognized 
the slim lad of seventeen with whom I had driven into Bourmont 
from Goncourt once after a load of canteen supplies. As each 
team passed, we waved our hands and wished them luck; but all 
the time I kept repeating to myself : 

" They're going right down into it. God help them! Why does 
ithave to be?" 

A French officer encountered us, asked us politely if we wouldn't 
like to step down into a dugout. I was amused at his manner 
which was as casual as if he were offering us an umbrella in a^hower. 
There were some excellent dug-outs up on the hill-side he assured 
us. "But I don't want to go into a dugout!" "Mademoiselle a 
beaucoup oV esprit" he observed, " mais ce n'est pas prudent." Obedi- 
ently we climbed the hill, to come upon a little group of Americans 
gathered about the entrance to a dugout, watching the shells as 
they came over. Taking a peep into the dugout I found it had 
already been patronized by several poilus. We sat on the ground 
and watched the shelling. On the other side of the town we could 
see Company H flung out in skirmish line, marching over the open 
fields. 

Presently a boy in olive drab came panting and laughing up 
the hill. The group welcomed him with a shout. He was one of 
the billeting detail. They had been staying in a house at the cross- 
roads. When the others had gone out this morning he had been 
left to clean up and get dinner. He had washed all the dishes, he 



THE FRONT 97 

told us, and had just gone out and bought a basketful of eggs to 
make an omelette for dinner, when crash! the first shell had fallen 
demolishing the house next to theirs. He had stepped out to look 
at the ruins and returned, when bang! went the house on the other 
side of him! He began to think it might be time for him to move, 
when, oh boy! zowie! a shell had wrecked the upper story of the 
billet over him. Then he had left. But he was feeling very badly 
about those eggs. Corporal G. also of the billeting detail looked 
at him with widened eyes. "And I was half a mind to stay up- 
stairs in bed and not get up this morning!" he remarked. The 
boys found solace for the loss of the omelette in the thought that 
all the effects of the very unpopular captain billeted next door 
must surely have been annihilated. 

After an hour or so the shelling stopped. One by one blue forms 
emerged from the dugouts. The Chief had ordered the flivver to 
report at eleven. It was noon and it hadn't appeared. 

"We must walk to Rattentout," said the Chief. "No use our 
staying here." 

It was hot and dusty and my helmet weighed like a mountain 
on my head, but at last we made it. Some two miles or so from 
Dugny we passed two marines sitting in discouraged postures by 
the roadside. 

"What's the matter?" 

"He's had a fit," growled one of the warriors, jerking his thumb 
in the direction of his comrade's back. 

"He has 'em. They never ought ter let him come." 

There was nothing we could offer them but sympathy. 

Rattentout, March 17. 
Here I am sitting on a bench in the little garden back of our 
billet, soaked in spring sunshine. Over my head the lilacs are 
leafing out against a sky of Italian blue, at my feet are golden 
crocuses and the first pale primroses. But the sky, as one gazes 
at it, has an odd trick of breaking out in little puffy dots of white 
like nothing so much as kernels of corn in a corn-popper. These 



9 8 RATTENTOUT 

are of course the bursting shells fired by French anti-aircraft bat- 
teries at the enemy aviators overhead; sometimes you can see the 
plane itself, skimming like a gnat among the smoke puffs. "They 
don't seem to get 'em often," as a boy remarked to me. " But golly 
they do make 'em move!" 

Ever since the Americans began to arrive the German planes 
have been constantly overhead. They are taking photographs; 
they say. Where, oh where are our American aviators? 

In my ears as I sit here is a curious sound, a sound like the pound- 
ing of tremendous breakers on a stormy shore: it is the guns of 
Verdun, Les Eparges and St. Mihiel. At rhythmic intervals this 
sound is punctuated by heavy crashing thuds nearer atJiand. They 
are shelling Dugny again. All the civilians fled yesterday. A 
driver, coming in last night, told us how they went, empty-handed, 
creeping along the edges of the roads under the cover of trees or 
brush, fearing to step out in the open lest they be spied and bombed 
by the German aeroplanes overhead. The church where they held 
the poilu's funeral has already been struck by a shell and the steeple 
demolished. 

In front of the house the street is quiet. All through the day 
the town seems a sleepy deserted place, but at night it is a different 
matter; then the real business of the day begins. Carts and camions 
may straggle past at odd intervals during the daylight hours, but 
with darkness, the traffic starts to pour by in a perfectly unbroken 
stream. One lies awake and listens, it seems for hours, to the 
absolutely incessant rattle of carts, trucks, caissons and gun car- 
riages passing along the road, until it seems as if the whole French 
Army must be on the move. 

Little Pauline is better today. She has just come running into 
the garden through the back gate, in company with a big curly 
dog. Rattentout they tell us is the "Dog Town" for this sector; 
every dog picked up near the front, lost mascots, faithful beasts 
looking for their masters, strays of every sort, are sent back here 
for keeping. 

Presently I must go in and help M. get the supper. Our food, 



THE FRONT 99 

over and beyond what we brought from Bar-le-Duc in tins and sacks, 
is furnished us by the French Army. Every morning a dapper 
little corporal calls to take our orders. When the official inter- 
preter is out it falls to me to do the parleying. The corporal is 
patient and very military and oh so polite! He brings us fresh 
butter, fresh eggs, even so much as a quart of fresh milk, and the 
most delicious fresh French bread I have ever tasted. The first 
day he came he was dreadfully distressed; he had no fresh meat 
to offer us. This morning he shone with smiles. There was plenty 
of fresh beef now, plenty! We ordered some and ate it stewed for 
dinner. It was dark and tough and stringy. I could dare swear 
that I saw that "beef" freshly slaughtered yesterday at Dugny 
cross-roads. 

A French liaison officer called here this afternoon. He told me 
that it was quite true that a certain regiment of French infantry 
had gone into battle, each man carrying with him the wooden 
cross which was to mark his grave if he fell. To earn le croix de 
bois is the current slang phrase among the French to designate 
dying a soldier's death. 

Yesterday noon a detachment of marines arrived in Rattentout. 
During the day they must keep under cover, but last night after 
sundown they came out and played baseball in the street. When I 
looked out my window and saw those lads in olive drab nonchal- 
antly throwing and catching a baseball under my window, I felt 
as if something safe and sane had somehow appeared in the midst 
of a strange night-mare world. 

Rattentout, March 18. 

I have said; "Good-bye, Good luck!" to my boys. 

Today we received word that the first battalion of my regiment 
was to take its place in the trenches by Les Eparges at twelve 
o'clock tonight, leaving Genicourt where they have been billeted, 
at eight. I breathed a piteous appeal to the Chief. At five o'clock 
the car called for us. 

Earlier in the afternoon there had been an air battle over Geni- 



ioo RATTENTOUT 

court. I heard the soft whut, whut of the anti-aircraft guns, and 
later the staccato rattle of machine-guns in the air. Looking out 
I could see the planes, one German and two French darting among 
the shrapnel puffs, the German escaping, sad to say, unharmed. 
Now a French observation balloon was floating over Genicourt, a 
curious-looking thing shaped like a huge ram's head, and a dull 
green in color. As we neared the town they started to haul the 
balloon in: it came down with astonishing rapidity. 

We rolled into Genicourt, a sodden desolate village clinging under 
the lea of a low hill, just now alive with suppressed vitality. The 
boys had been ordered to keep their billets until the last moment, 
as any unusual number of men about might be observed by an 
enemy aeroplane. Nevertheless there were plenty of stragglers in 
the streets, while out of the windows were leaning several hundred 
more, craning their necks in order to get a glimpse of the des- 
cending balloon. 

We went to the Foyer du Soldat, a bright clean barracks, the 
walls covered with posters in vivid hues. It was full of our boys. 
They laughed, joked, played checkers and pounded the piano, some 
were dancing together. Yet through all the gaiety one had a sense 
of tension, of nervous strain. Some of the boys asked us to sing, 
one lad evidently in a more solemn mood repeatedly requested 
"My Country 'Tis of Thee." We sang the "Long, Long TraiT 
and "Keep the Home Fires Burning." Then we went out in the 
street again. The French, we gathered, were quite astonished at 
the high spirits of the Americans. "Ah, but it's their first time," 
they said. "After four years it will be different." 

In the public square they had been holding some sort of cere- 
mony, an interchange of formal greetings between the French and 
American officers. A French military band had just finished its 
programme. As we passed they played the Marseillaise and the 
Star Spangled Banner; we all stood at attention. 

We came to the street where Company A was billeted. The 
boys leaned out of the windows and waved and called to me. Every- 
where it was the same question: 



THE FRONT 101 

"What shall I bring you from the trenches? " 

"Do you want a live Boche for a souvenir? I'll get you one!" 

They thought my gas-mask was a lovely joke. "What's that 
strap across your shoulder for?" they teased. 

"That? Oh that's my new Sam Browne belt!" 

" Say! Bet you don't know how to put it on! " Then they would 
yell "Gas!" just to frighten me. 

In the street a little crowd of boys were tossing coppers. Every- 
body was anxious to get rid of his "clackers," in order not to have 
to carry all that useless weight into the trenches with him. They 
invited me to join. I tried one penny while the boys all cheered, 
only to miss by a good yard. Lieut. B. came by: "Will you take 
tea with me in my dugout?" he asked. 

The order was given for the companies to form. The streets 
filled up; dusk was gathering. The Chief said that it was time to 
go. We found the car in the public square. Slowly we moved out 
of town. I shall never forget those long brown files drawn up 
against the dim grey houses. Five hours hence and those very boys 
would be in the front fine trenches, face to face with the enemy. 
We passed Company A. I called out to them to be sure not to 
stick their heads up over the top, and not to dare to take off their 
gas-masks before they were ordered to. Never before did I realize 
how much those boys meant to me. Each face I saw flashed some 
vivid unforgettable association to my mind. "When you come 
back," I called, "I'll be waiting for you with the hot chocolate 
ready." They smiled and waved Good-bye to me. Some of them 
held up their fingers to show how many Germans they were going 
to account for. A turn in the road shut it all from sight. On 
the way back to Rattentout we passed the Third Battalion, 
who were marching in on their very heels to take over their 
billets. 

It's eleven o'clock now. They must be almost in. They are 
marching, I know, in darkness and silence; not a cigarette is to 
be lighted, not a word spoken above a whisper. One hour more 
and the relief will be completed. 



102 RATTENTOUT 

Rattentout, March 19. 

I am to be sent to Paris for reassignment. I have, it seems, 
been guilty of conduct unbecoming a lady under shell-fire. This 
sentence has been hanging over me ever since that day at Dugny. 
I knew of course that I was in disgrace but never dreamed that it 
would come to this. 

It seems, what no one had troubled to hint to me, that we have 
been allowed to go farther front than any women of any of the 
Allied Nations in France have been permitted to go to work before. 
Moreover that the French, whose guests we are in this sector, were 
very much opposed to the presence of women here, and only finally, 
after much persuasion, allowed us to come here on trial. Now 
the Chief says that he is afraid that my indiscreet action at Dugny 
in going down to the cross-roads instead of into a dugout may have 
shocked the French. In order to forestall any possible protest by 
our Allies I am to be made an example of the discipline of the 
organization. 

Etretat, Normandy. March 28. 

I have been here a week on leave. To-morrow I start back for 
Paris once more. Where I am to go after that is uncertain. 

It seems strange to be in France and not be wading through seas 
of mud, but to have firm turf and dry roads beneath one's feet. The 
hamlets here, while picturesque, are quite spruce and tidy, amaz- 
ingly different from the quaint but indescribably dirty little mud- 
pie muck-heap villages to which I have been used. 

This pretty little coast town, once a fishing village, then a sum- 
mer resort, is now chiefly a hospital. All the large hotels have 
been taken over for wards and nurses' quarters, the big casino 
filled with row on row of iron cots. It is an American hospital with 
American doctors, nurses and orderlies, but attached to the B. E. F. 
and filled of course with British patients. As in all the English 
hospitals, as soon as a patient is able to get out of bed he is dressed 
in a "suit of blues;" trousers and jumper blouse of bright blue 
cotton, white shirt, scarlet tie and handkerchief to match, making 
him look exactly like a grown-up. Greenaway boy. The men hate 



THE FRONT 103 

them, they tell me, but I for one am grateful to the designer as the 
bright blue and scarlet makes wonderful splotches of color in the 
landscape. 

There may be a more disgusted set of boys in France than these 
here in the hospital corps at Base No. 2, but if so I have yet to meet 
them. One of the first units to come across, landing in May of 19 17, 
every man enlisted, so they tell me, because he thought it was the 
quickest means of getting to the front in field hospital service 
and most of them enlisted to do some form of specialized work; 
but, medical students, college professors, and motor experts, they 
each and all were given the job of hospital orderly which means 
scrubbing floors, washing windows, shovelling coal, doing the hard 
and dirty work of a hospital, and, most galling I fancy of all, — 
taking orders from girls with whom you are not allowed to associate 
or even speak except in the line of business. The X-ray expert 
has been delegated to the job of keeping the hospital pigs. I saw 
him in a pair of grimy overalls trundling a well-worn wheelbarrow 
down the street. The man who speaks eight languages, and en- 
listed as interpreter, spends his days checking up clothes in the 
laundry. And here as hospital orderlies in spite of their frantic 
efforts to get transferred, it seems likely that they will stay. 

But these are dark days for us all just now, with the news that 
comes in every day of the German drive. ''What do the officers in 
the hospital think? What do they say about it?" I tease the 
nurses. 

"They think that we will hold them," they reply, but none too 
hopefully. 

At the hotel where I am staying there is a French officer en per- 
mission, with his wife and apparently unlimited offspring. With 
them is an English governess. She is a little nervous thing all 
a-twitter these days with excitement and apprehension. Will the 
Germans get through to Paris? Monsieur's aged mother is there. 
He is thinking of going back to get her, together with a few essen- 
tial household treasures. She herself had fled with the family 
from Paris in 1914. It was a dreadful experience; fourteen people 



104 RATTENTOUT 

crowded in a coach for six, and nothing to eat. Oh dear! wasn't 
it all just too terrible! 

There is also an old French lady here who frankly fled from Paris 
to escape the air-raids; now someone has taken all the joy out of 
life for her by suggesting that Etretat might be shelled from the 
sea by a German submarine. 

The Tommies in the hospitals, they say, flatly refuse to believe 
that Paris is being shelled. It isn't possible, they declare, for a gun 
to shoot as far as that, and to them that is the end of it. But to- 
night a little crowd of the hospital boys who had gone on pass to 
Paris came back as eye-witnesses. One of the first shells had fallen 
very close to them, killing a number of people who were sitting drink- 
ing in a sidewalk cafe. The boys had gone up to the Church of 
Sacre Cceur on Montmartre and from the tower there had watched 
the shelling of the city. It had been a beautiful clear day: they 
could see where each shell struck. One of the boys brought back 
with him for a souvenir a piece of a French lieutenant's skull, 
picked up, after the shell had wrecked the cafe, from the sidewalk. 

Tonight there was a concert at the Y hut here. The hall was 
crowded; the concert party, a group of pretty girls, had just com- 
pleted, to much applause, the first number, when a horn sounded 
in the distance. Everybody started up. The Y man stepped for- 
ward and announced the programme over. In a few minutes the 
hut was deserted. "The convoy is in," they said, which meant 
that a train load of wounded had arrived at the station. 

Paris, Easter Sunday. 
On the way here from Etretat I saw a sight which brought the 
war closer to me somehow than anything before; at the junction 
station connecting the line to Le Havre with the line to Amiens, 
a string of box cars full of women, little children and decrepit 
old men, packed in like cattle, fleeing before the German drive, 
many of them empty-handed, others with a few pathetic futile 
treasures, a hen or two, a copper cooking-pot, snatched up evidently 
in a moment of half-witless panic haste. 



THE FRONT 105 

Nor is Paris itself without its refugees. The German advance, 
the air-raids, the shelling, culminating in the Good Friday horror, 
have combined to render the city half deserted. 

"Paris? We call Paris 'the front' nowadays," one Frenchman 
on the journey had remarked to me. 

Yesterday I went shopping. Everywhere it was the same reply. 
Nothing could be made to order for an indefinite period, the work- 
rooms were all deserted, the workers fled. As for those who re- 
main, they seem to take life calmly enough; what else can they 
do? When, as yesterday, every sixteen minutes a tremendous 
jarring crash tells you that a shell has fallen somewhere in the 
city, — and the concussion is so great that it always sounds as 
if it had fallen in the next block! — you see people turn their 
heads as they walk, staring in the direction of the explosion; 
others come out on the balconies to see what they can see and 
that is all. 

Of course the danger of all this lies in its effect on the civilian 
morale. In connection with this I learned an interesting thing 
today. While the hospitals outside are over-crowded, the hospitals 
in Paris with their splendid equipment and staffs are left half empty, 
because they dare not show the people of Paris too many wounded. 
And when convoys are brought into the city, they are often 
detained outside, sometimes for hours, in order that the wounded 
may be transferred to the hospitals at night. 

Yesterday at Brentano's I got talking with a boy who belonged to 
the American Ambulance Section which is attached to the French. 
He told me an incident which struck my fancy: 

One night, at the front, after a hard day's work, he had just 
dropped off to sleep when he was awakened. There was a bless e 
to be taken back to the hospital, he was in bad shape, they had 
placed him in an ambulance. The boy rolled out of his blankets, 
started up the car. It was a bitter night. Once he was on his way 
everything went wrong; the water had frozen in the radiator, he 
had to get out and crawl along the ditches on his hands and knees, 
trying, in the dark to find a pool that was still unfrozen. And all 



106 RATTENTOUT 

the while he was tortured by the thought that the life of the wounded 
man in the car depended probably on his speed in reaching the 
hospital, and this urged him to an agony of haste. Finally, as the 
dawn was breaking, he reached his goal. They came to carry the 
blesse in. The wounded man was dead; he had been dead, it was 
evident, some while before the boy started. At the front, he ex- 
plained, they hate to take the time and trouble to bury bodies. So 
whenever it is possible they work this method of passing on the 
task to someone else. You have to be constantly on the look-out 
for such tricks. This time they had fooled him. 

Last night there was an air-raid. It was a mild affair. I was 
awakened by the sirens. They make what is to me quite the most 
fascinatingly horrible sound I have ever heard. That long agon- 
ized wail, now sinking to a shuddering whimper, now rising to a 
banshee screech, flashes vividly to my mind's eye a myriad little 
demons sitting on the roofs of Paris, cowering, shivering, crying 
out their abject terror. I went to the window and looked out, but 
although my room is on the top floor of the hotel, I could see noth- 
ing and so went back to bed again. The anti-aircraft guns put 
up a tremendous barrage; they have them mounted on trucks now 
so they can quickly be shifted from point to point about the city. 
I am sure there was a whole battery just in front of the hotel. 
Today the papers inform us that the Gothas were driven back after 
reaching the suburbs. 

This morning I went to service at Notre Dame, entering through 
piles of sand bags heaped so as to hide the carvings about the door- 
ways. In that vast cathedral only a few were present, a fair share 
of the congregation being comprised of Americans. 

Tonight an ambulance driver attached to one of the Paris hospi- 
tals came to the hotel for dinner. He spread a startling tale. 
Every ambulance in the city has been ordered to be in readiness; 
for tomorrow, it has been learned, twenty-seven long-range guns 
are to be turned at once on Paris! 



THE FRONT 107 

Aix-les-Bains, April 6. 

When they said "Leave Area" to me my heart sank. The Lady 
in the Office explained to me how very important she considered 
the work, and the assignment, she added, need not be permanent. 
"Very well" I said, "I'm willing to go there temporarily." 

I left Paris Tuesday, taking the night train. Getting off was 
something of an ordeal. The lighting at the stations, as on the 
streets, has been reduced almost to the vanishing point. The 
great Gare de Lyon was filled with a mass of distraught humanity 
over whom the few violet-blue bulbs cast a ghostly glimmer. There 
were no porters to take one's luggage; a number of women had 
possessed themselves of the baggage trucks and were pushing them, 
heaped high with bags and household stuff, recklessly through the 
crowds. I could find no officials anywhere about. All the French 
orderliness and red tape seemed to have been swept clean away 
and the result was chaos. Somehow, I don't know quite how, I 
found my train and reached my seat. 

Three very fat old gentlemen and one old lady occupied the 
compartment with me. The fat gentlemen had one little spoiled 
dog between them which they kept passing from one to the other, 
in order that each in turn might kiss him. The old lady had a 
bird in a cage; presently she opened her hand-bag and brought out 
her supper, a loaf of bread, junwrapped, together with a good- 
sized turtle. For a moment, such were her raptures over her pet, 
I thought that she was going to kiss the turtle. The first minute 
that one of my companions entered the compartment, each in- 
formed all the rest that he or she was not running away from the 
air-raids or the long range guns. "I? / am not afraid of the 
Kaiser's Gothas! I laugh at them! " A few minutes later however 
they began: Ah, what a fearful night, last night had been! Five 
hours in the Caves! No sleep at all! One might as well be a mole 
and take up one's dwelling underground. What a life! Oh it was 
terrible, terrible! Then one old gentleman turned proudly to the 
little fat canine. "But of a verity, my little Toto is possessed of 
a sagacity extraordinary. The moment that he hears the sirens, 



108 RATTENTOUT 

he will run down into the cellar, and nothing can induce him to 
come up again until the 'all clear' has sounded!" 

We pulled into Aix soon after dawn as the rising sun was touch- 
ing the tops of the mountains and the morning mists were hover- 
ing over the lake. Whatever the work may prove to be like here, 
the place is surpassingly lovely. It is too early for the summer 
resort pleasure seekers. The French don't care for it here until 
it grows really hot, they tell us. But to me the season is at its 
most appealing rnoment. One glimpses pink peach blossoms against 
the blue lake over which stand purple mountains with snow still 
lying on their summits. Several of the large hotels and casinos 
have been requisitioned for French convalescent hospitals, but 
the largest of all has been taken over by the Y. JFrom this canteen 
excursions are constantly setting out, motor-boats on the lake, 
motor cars to Chambery, the cog-wheel railway up Mt. Revard, 
picnics, hikes and fishing parties, yet many of the boys seem to 
find it pleasantest to do nothing, — just to sit around in lazy com- 
fort all day long, watching the others playing billiards, listening 
to the orchestra in the afternoon beneath the gold mosaic casino 
dome, sitting luxuriously in a box at the vaudeville in the evening, 
gaining a maximum of pleasure with a minimum of exertion. Many 
of the boys came here with their heads full of pessimistic expecta- 
tions. 

"They told us it would be Reveille and Retreat and one day's 
K. P. for each of us," confided one lad to me. 

Some brought their mess-kits and some even their blankets. 
When they find themselves guests in hotels that are among the 
finest in Europe, lodged in comfortable rooms, eating real food off 
tables furnished with china-ware and linen, at first they are fairly 
dazed. 

"I'm feared somebody'll pinch me an' I'll wake up," declared 
one lad today. 

More than one has told me, that the first night he got here, he 
could not go to sleep in bed at all and only finally achieved slumber 
by rolling himself in blankets on the floor. 



THE FRONT 109 

There are no troops from the line here at present; only boys 
from forestry regiments, motor mechanics and a few lads from 
medical detachments. They are holding up the leaves of all com- 
batant troops on account of the drive. It may be that presently 
they will hold up all leaves altogether. Then we will have to shut 
up shop here temporarily. 

It is the pleasant custom here for the Y ladies to go down to the 
train every night to see the boys off. 

"It's a shame you can't stay longer," we say tothem. 

"I'll say it is!" 

"I'm awfully sorry you have to go." 

"You ain't half so sorry as I am, Lady." 

"Maybe some day you'll be coming back again." 

"I'll tell the world one thing; I'm going to be good as gold when 
I get back to camp, so they'll let me." 

One of the Y women tonight repeated what one boy on leaving 
had confided to her: 

"If I said to you that this had been my happiest week since I 
joined the army it wouldn't mean much," he told her, "but that's 
not what I'm going to say. What I'm going to say is that this 
has been the happiest week of all my life." 

So far I have found just one man who wasn't enjoying himself 
here. He had been stationed for six months at Paris. Aix, he 
declared, "Weren't no town at all, nothin' but a one-horse place." 
He evidently had no soul for the beauties of nature. 

Paris, April 22. 

They held the leaves up. The boys kept leaving; fewer and 
fewer came, then finally none. Last week they disbanded the 
force of workers at Aix; a few stayed to look after things until 
such time as the crowds should start to pour in again; the rest v/ere 
sent back to Paris to be reassigned. 

If I thought the trip down was a chore, it wasn't a patch on the 
trip back. We waited half the night for the train at the Aix rail- 
way station. When it finally pulled in, I found my seat was in a 



no RATTENTOUT 

compartment which was full, and had evidently been so for hours, 
of French people. Now life in France tends to cure you of belief 
in several popular superstitions; one is the idea that it is dangerous 
to have wet feet, and another that there is anything in the germ 
theory; but there is one notion to which I still cling, an obstinate 
belief in the desirability of fresh air. I putmy head in the compart- 
ment, then withdrew, shutting the door. For the twelve hours it 
took to reach Paris I stood up outside in the corridor. 

Arrived in Paris, they assigned me temporarily to the Avenue 
Montaigne Club House. This is a beautiful building, the home 
of one of Napoleon's generals; but the best thing about it is the 
tea-room restaurant, for here they serve apple-pie, chocolate cake 
and ice-cream. Since the latest food restrictions were issued, 
forbidding the French to make desserts employing milk, cream, 
sugar, eggs or flour, such dainties have been unobtainable any- 
where else in Paris; but the Americans drawing supplies from their 
own commissary, are of course untouched by such regulations. 
Indeed the saddest sign in France these days I often think is that 
over the deserted shops which reads Patisserie. To be sure some 
of these stores still make a show at doing business, filling their 
windows with raisins, dried prunes and other prosaic edibles, to- 
gether with heaps of pseudo-chocolates wrapped gayly in tin-foil, 
but which when purchased proved to be nothing but what one boy 
termed "the same old camouflage," — an unappetizing paste of 
dried fruits and ground nuts. Yesterday a curly-headed lad, who 
looked about sixteen, came into the canteen carrying a big bunch 
of pink carnations. These were for the waitresses, he said, because 
they were the first American ladies that he had seen in France. 
We each pinned a spray to the front of our pink aprons, and then, 
since he pretended famine, let him have "seconds", — quite against 
the rules — on everything, with all the ice-cream and cake that he 
could swallow. 

Yesterday I saw Mr. T. who was with us for a while at Goncourt. 
He told me that French troops en repos were occupying that area 
at present. They had asked for the use of our hut and of course 



THE FRONT in 

it had been granted them. A Y man, happening by the other day, 
had stopped in. They had converted our beautiful hut into a regu- 
lar French Cantine with three men to hand the bottles over the 
counter "and a smell enough to knock you down." Who shall say 
that this is the least of life's little ironies? 

This morning I met N. who had reached Rattentout the day I 
left. She tells me that all the villages occupied by our troops in 
the sector have, one by one, been shelled. Rattentout was shelled 
and two Frenchwomen killed. Because of the constant shelling all 
the Y women workers had been withdrawn from the canteens and 
sent back to safety at Souilly where they have nothing to do but sit 
and possess their souls in patience. 

Tonight they gave me my new assignment. It is at Gondrecourt. 
I leave tomorrow. I am glad, so glad over the prospect of being 
back on a real job once more! Here at the Avenue Montaigne 
as in the gilded casino at Aix I have been desperately homesick, 
to be back in a real hut again! 



CHAPTER IV 

GONDRECOURT 

THE ARTILLERY 

Gondrecourt, April 28. 

Gondrecourt is quite a place. It boasts a brewery, a hotel, a 
mediaeval tower and a number of little stores. Each one of these 
stores contains at least one pretty girl on its selling force and the 
ratio between the sales of goods and the charms of the ladies is, 
I fancy, quite exact. From the military point of view Gondre- 
court is important as being the site of the First Army Corps Train- 
ing Schools. But to me the really distinguishing feature of Gondre- 
court is the fact that it boasts a bath-tub. If anybody had said 
bath-tub to me the day before I arrived here, I would have said 
with the doughboy that, — short of Paris — "there ain't no such 
animal." But now I have beheld it with my own eyes, a white- 
enamelled bath-tub, a Y. M. C. A. bath-tub, in the basement at 
Headquarters. The tub is supposed to be a strictly family affair, — 
on the door are posted hours for the Lady Secretaries and hours 
for the Men Secretaries, — but in spite of the plain English before 
their eyes, it seems that army officers occasionally slip in and steal 
a bath off us, yes, even impinging on the sacred bath hours of the 
ladies! 

My first day here they sent me to "The Cafe." This was once 
a very wild place indeed. When the Y. first came to Gondrecourt 
it tried to buy the proprietor out, but the proprietor refused; he 
was doing too profitable a business. Then one night Providence 
sent some Boche planes wandering in this direction. There was a 
panic among the populace; the proprietor, with visions of his place 
wrecked by a bomb, sold out in a hurry and left town. Since then 
the Cafe has led a reformed and decorous existence but the old 



THE ARTILLERY 113 

name still clings. My second day I spent at the " Double Hut," 
the big hut built up on the hill close by the Infantry School. The 
third day I was introduced to my own canteen. 

According to directions, I climbed the hill by my billet, went 
past the athletic field, past the warehouse and out along the edge 
of the rolling open upland. About half a mile out of town I came 
to a group of seven French barracks, covered with black tar paper, 
built at the edge of the railway cut. This was the Artillery School. 
I crossed the field, entered the nearest barracks which bore a Y. 
sign at one end, and found myself in a Greenwich Village Tea 
House. I stood and stared. Some modern-school interior decorator 
had been at work. The place was a riot of red, yellow, salmon- 
color and black, worked out from a nasturtium motif. In the 
wall panels were paintings, some conventionalized fruits and flow- 
ers, evidently done by the decorator; others, landscapes, Japanese 
scenes and some rather awful Indians just as evidently executed 
by the boys. The whole effect to be sure was a bit sketchy and in 
spots frankly unfinished, and yet to one used to such simplicity 
in the huts as I, the ensemble was startling. Back of the black and 
orange partition which screens the canteen and the kitchen from 
the hut proper, I found the staff, secretary and canteen worker. 
The lady whom I am to replace, it appears, belongs in reality to 
the Motor Transport Section. She turned canteen worker to help 
out in a pinch, and now is anxious to return again. 

When dinner-time came the Motor Transport girl told me that 
we had been invited to dine at the camp. We went over to the 
mess-hall. "Let's help feed the chow-line for a lark!" said the 
M. T. girl. So we stood behind the serving-bench and ladled out 
big spoonfuls of mashed potato and gravy. This amused the boys 
immensely; and as they passed they would sing out: 

"When did they put you on K. P?" 

"What have you done to deserve this?" 

The kitchen was white-washed and specklessly clean, the earth 
floor was covered with cinders. These cinders which are in use 
for floors and walks in all the camps about, come, I am told, from 



ii 4 GONDRECOURT 

a great heap down by the river which marks the site of one of 
Napoleon's cannon foundries. 

"Why are the boxers in a company always found on the kitchen 
force? " I asked one of the cooks. 

"That's so they can handle the boys when they come back for 
seconds." 

As soon as the chow-line had been fed, the M. T. girl and I had 
ours with the Top Sergeant. After dinner the Top Sergeant, who 
had formerly been mess sergeant, was moved to unburden his soul 
as to the sorrows of a mess sergeant. 

"When I was mess sergeant," he reminisced, "I sure got to 
know the way to a man's heart all right. Why, the days when I 
gave them a good dinner there wasn't a man in camp who wouldn't 
positively beam at me; but if something had gone wrong and the 
chow wasn't up to scratch, half the fellers in the company wouldn't 
speak to me the rest of the day." 

Then he grinned. "I wouldn't want Mother to know the way I 
used to get stuff for the boys last winter." 

He went on to tell us. French freight trains have no brakemen 
and the conductor rides in a caboose directly behind the coal car. 
Trains pulling into town from the north hit a grade curve close to 
the camp, up which they must pull very slowly. The camp guard 
kept a lookout; when a freight train with flat cars was sighted, 
word was immediately passed to the mess sergeant who with a 
number of K. P.s hurried to the tracks and boarded the slow-mov- 
ing train; if the cars proved to holdjmy thing of value for the mess, — 
be it coal or cabbages, — all the way up the grade the sergeant and 
his assistants were busy, hastily throwing or shoveling what they 
could over the sides of the cars. At thejtop of the grade they would 
jump off and returning along the tracks, gather up the spoils. 

Tomorrow the Motor Transport girl departs and I "take over" 
the canteen. 

GONDRECOURT, MAY 4. 

The Artillery School consists of some few hundred officers and 
non-coms enrolled for each four-weeks' course, in addition to the 



THE ARTILLERY 115 

two batteries who are here, for demonstration work; .Battery D from 
a regiment of "75s" and Battery A from a regiment of the big 
"155s." Selected for this exhibition jvork on account of their ex- 
ceptional ability, they are, I suppose, the equal of any batteries in 
the world. When the boys enlisted these batteries were declared 
to be about to be "motorized," but at present the motor power is 
being supplied by a particularly unresponsive set of French cart 
horses, whose daily care is the greatest trial of the boys' lives. Last 
night we had a movie-show; one reel gave the story of a discontented 
boy on the farm — showing him at one moment disgustedly groom- 
ing Dobbin. For a full minute it seemed as if the roof of the hut 
was going to be hf ted right off. 

The officers' quarters and the class-rooms lie across the railroad 
track from the camp, in the grounds of the Chateau. Here they 
have a canteen of their own, a cool little place in cream color and 
blue presided over by a most refreshing and delightful English 
lady. The Chateau itself was partially destroyed by fire a few 
years ago and though the lower story is available for offices, the 
upper story stands roofless, with empty windows staring against 
the sky. Every now and then a rumour goes the rounds: — Per- 
shing is going to move his headquarters to Gondrecourt, — the 
Chateau is to be repaired for Jiis use! The Chateau and the school 
buildings stand on high ground. To the south the ground falls 
away suddenly; below is "off limits" and is Fairyland. Here are 
meadows warm with the color of spring flowers, here are groves 
such as one sees in the pictures of Eighteenth Century shepherds 
and shepherdesses, and here is the river flowing so placidly that 
its waters seem to form still lagoons, white-flecked with swans and 
arched with rustic bridges. Here while the boys are at their mess, 
I have been stealing to eat my picnic supper; an orange, a sand- 
wich and a piece of chocolate. The guard walking post at the 
foot of the embankment shuts one eye as I go past, — and usually 
gets half of my supper! For that matter I gather he is there largely 
for the sake of appearance, for there's not a boy in camp I'm sure 
who hasn't explored those groves, fed the swans, and angled for 



u6 GONDRECOURT 

fish in the river. And the only reason, I'm certain, that they don't 
surreptitiously go in swimming there is that the water, fed by 
springs, is cold as ice! Nor is the touch of romance that should go 
with such a setting absent. One of the cooks in the officers' mess 
kitchen is deep in an affair with Lucile, the caretaker's daughter, 
a girl like a wild rose, shy, slender, freshly-tinted. Every other 
night when he is off duty he carries her chocolate from the canteen 
and she " gives him a French lesson." 

" Serious?" I asked inquisitively. 

"Fat chance!" he glowered at me frankly. "She tells me that 
she's engaged to twelve fellows now already and that twelve's 
enough." 

The proprietor of the Chateau, Monsieur S., has the distinction 
of being the father of ten girls. I like to fancy that the spirits of 
the ten lovely daughters, — for lovely they must be, as no French- 
man, I am sure, would have the courage to father ten homely ones! 
— haunt the Chateau gardens. 

The boys, however, don't have to rely on phantoms for thrills 
of this sort. Yesterday, they tell me, that during the progress of an 
exciting ball-game on the Y. athletic field a beautiful lady dressed 
a la Parisienne strolled by. The batter dropped his bat, the pitcher 
forgot his ball; the game came to a dead halt until the beautiful 
lady had passed out of sight. 

GONDRECOURT, MAY 13. 

The Secretary is sick. He lies in his little bed-room office and 
reads the latest magazines and gossips with his visitors while I 
attempt to run the hut single-handed. At times during this last 
week I have been strongly tempted to get sick myself. Indeed I 
think I probably would have done so if it hadn't been for Snow. 
Snow, Snowball or Ivory as he is variously called, is Battery D's 
albino cook. "Say, ain't I the whitest-haired beggar you ever did 
see?" he asked me the other day in a sort of naive wonder at him- 
self. "Anyway, nobody ever had a cleaner-looking cook," re- 
marked the Top Sergeant, ex-Mess Sergeant. Snow has the sweet- 



THE ARTILLERY 117 

est disposition in the world. "If Snow was starving to death," 
declared one of the boys to me today, " and somebody gave him a 
sandwich, and he thought you were the least bit hungry, he'd give 
you that sandwich." Ever since the Secretary has been sick, Snow 
has been bringing him toast and eggs and things while he has 
brought me lemon pies, the most wonderful lemon pies that ever 
I tasted. Already Snow has come to be looked upon by the boys 
as an authority on all things pertaining to the canteen and has to 
stand a battery of searching questions, such as, whether he thinks 
that my hair is really all my own? 

Just to add to all our other troubles this week we have run 
amuck of the Major. This I suspect was all my fault. I was fu- 
rious because when he came into the hut he made the boys stand 
at attention. This was something I had never seen done before 
and is, I am sure, contrary to all the rules. J was so angry that 
when the Major came up to the counter I stood and glared at him. 

"You will find the Secretary in his office," I said and turned 
and walked out the back door. It was the Major's turn to be 
angry then. He stalked out behind the counter, looking for trouble, 
and began to hold an inspection in the kitchen. The Secretary 
appeared, the Major let loose. That kitchen, he declared, was not 
up to army standards in cleanliness. This was a matter of utmost 
importance. Hereafter the medical officer would inspect the 
kitchen daily. Then he proceeded to prescribe a schedule of 
canteen hours outside of which nothing at all must be sold. 

Now I admit that kitchen hasn't been quite all it might be. It 
is a small, overcrowded place, built of rough dirty boards and there 
are no shelves, nor of course running water, nor conveniences of 
any kind. Moreover, the Major, I learn, has the reputation of 
being a tartar in this respect; "Major Mess Kit" they call him 
because of the rigour of his inspections. 

The next morning the medical officer arrived at the crack of 
dawn. He found the chocolate cups from the night before unwashed. 
He was shocked. He too read the Secretary a lecture. Then he 
departed to do the sensible, the saving thing, which was to rec- 



n8 GONDRECOURT 

ommend to the Major that we be allowed a detail. So it all worked 
out for the best in the end. " Neddy" as we have christened the 
detail is now a part of the family. A shy, dreamy lad, he is ;at 
hand to help from early morning until closing time at nine at night, 
and I actually have to shoo him out to his meals. The only trou- 
ble with Neddy is that he is so good I am sure that he is going to 
die young. And besides Neddy I now have a pet bugaboo. This 
has proved so useful these last few days that I don't know how 
I ever kept a canteen without one. Now any time that officers 
come to my kitchen door to tease for cigarettes out of selling hours 
I can gleefully tell them: 

"Oh, but I wouldn't dare! The Major, you know! He's ex- 
pressly forbidden it! If I did and he learned about it, he would 
surely have me court-martialed!" 

Of course when the boys come out of hours that is quite a dif- 
ferent matter. 

Then, too, as the Major is detested by the men, this furnishes 
a common bond of sympathy. This morning a boy came to my 
back door to borrow our axe in order to chop up the Major's wood. 

"You can have it on one condition," I told him. 

"What's that?" 

"That you chop off the Major's head with it too." 

GONDRECOURT, MAY 24. 

I have always cherished a secret longing to have pets in my can- 
teen: I have heard of huts that kept kittens and canaries, and once 
I visited in one where an ant-eater, if not an habitue, was at least 
a frequent and honoured guest and sat in the ladies' laps at the 
movie-shows. At various times I have considered and regretfully 
abandoned the project <of rabbits, a puppy, goldfish and a goat. 
But till recently the nearest I have come to realizing my dreams 
was when I found two large snails with black and yellow shells 
by the roadside. I carried them into the canteen and set them 
on a flowering branch in a vase. For two days the boys took a 
casual interest. They nicknamed them Bill and Daisy. 



THE ARTILLERY u 9 

"The* French eat snails you know," I told them. 

"You don't say!" 

"Yes and I had some myself the other day." 

"Aw shucks! You didn't really, did you? Why, before I'd eat 
them things! Say, what did they taste like anyway?" 

"They would have tasted pretty good," I answered, "if only 
while you were eating them you could have stopped thinking what 
they were!" 

One boy staring at my pets asked innocently; 

"Will butterflies come but of those?" 

After the snails our only livestock for a while was the canteen 
rat, whom I have never met myself, but of whom I have heard 
large rumours. The other day however I received a present of 
two real pets. One of the Y. drivers had been out to a wood-cut- 
ting camp in the forest. There an Italian lad had given him two 
young birds in a beautiful cage he had made himself with nothing 
but a pen-knife and a hot wire, and the driver brought the birds 
to me. I don't know what sort they were but they were tame and 
most amusing. To feed them was the immediate question. I 
asked the boys to dig me some earth worms, but this they seemed 
to consider beneath their dignity. Finally Neddy went out with 
a can, only to return wormless. He couldn't find any, he declared. 
I considered the advisability of asking the Top Sergeant for a 
worm-digging detail, but decided against it. Then I confided my 
troubles to my friend, the Warehouse Man. 

"I know," he said, "HI ask Pierre." 

Now Pierre is a little orphan refugee from the devastated dis- 
trict. He fives with one of the families on the edge of the town 
and I am afraid is none too well treated. When he isn't herding 
the cows over the meadows, he is usually hanging about the ware- 
house. A handsome, rather wild looking lad, dressed in a brown 
cap and an old brown suit, I always think of him as Peter Pan. 
The next morning Pierre appeared at my kitchen door with a can 
full of long fat wriggly angleworms and had his pockets filled with 
chocolate by way of recompense. Later I learned that the Ware- 



120 GONDRECOURT 

house Man, not being able to pronounce the French word for birds, 
had told Pierre that I wanted the worms for fishing, and Pierre 
after taking one look at the bird-cage had gone straight back and 
told the Ware-house Man that he was a liar. But cunning as my 
pets were, I couldn't quite reconcile myself to the idea of keeping 
wild birds in a cage. This morning I looked at Neddy: 

"Let's let them out." 

"Let's, " he answered. 

Now the only pet I have in prospect is the baby wild boar which 
a boy from one of the aviation camps nearby has promised me. 

GONDRECOURT, JUNE 2. 

Night before last, at half-past ten, as I was sitting here in my 
billet trying to write a letter, I heard a voice calling me from the 
street below. 

"What is it?" 

"It's Sergeant B . I've brought you a gas-mask." 

"What!" 

"There's a bunch of German planes headed in this direction. 
They're afraid of gas bombs. We got the alarm out at the school." 

I went down to the door. The sergeant gave me two gas-masks. 
I gave one to the English lady who has the room across the hall 
from me. Then I sat up waiting for the fun to begin. Nothing 
happened. I went to sleep with the gas-mask lying on the pillow 
beside me. 

The next morning the Chief declared that all the Y. personnel 
here must go to gas drill and have masks issued to them. Last 
night they rounded us up for a lesson. We stood in a big circle at 
the Gas School over on the hill while the gas instructors instructed 
us and the boys looked on and grinned. Gas drill consists of 
learning how to put on and take off your mask in the prescribed 
and formal manner. It is all done by count. If you can't do it in 
six seconds you are a casualty. As we popped our masks on and 
pulled them off again the hair of all the ladies present proceeded 
to slowly but relentlessly fall down their backs. The English Lady 



THE ARTILLERY 121 

stood next to me. "It's all stuff and nonsense," I could hear her 
muttering; " stuff and nonsense!" 

The noncom instructors walked around and informed each and 
all of us that if we didn't change the style of our coiffures we 
certainly would get gassed. 

"And now," said the instructor cheerfully, "I am going to send 
you through the gas-house." 

I looked desperately for a chance to sneak away, but there 
wasn't any; besides, several boys from my batteries were watching. 

"Oh this is nothing, nothing at all," declared the instructor. 
"We've only got the tear gas on tonight. You will go through 
once with your masks on, and then a second time without them." 

We put our masks on and marched in a long line into the gas- 
house. There was a table in the middle with candles burning on 
it, which gleamed golden through the thick yellowish clouds of 
gas. We marched around the table and out again. There was 
nothing to it; the masks were a perfect protection. 

"Now," said the instructor," you will go through without 
your masks. This is to give you confidence in them." The idea 
being that discovering how very nasty it was without one, you 
would be taught to appreciate the blessing of a mask. I had an 
inspiration. I would shut my eyes and hang on to the man in 
front of me! But alas, for my pretty plan, the line was too long; 
as I was about to enter: "Break the line here!" shouted the in- 
structor. I had to lead the second line into the gas house. I made 
double-quick time around that table. Just as I was about to dart 
out the door an English noncom instructor seized my arm and, 
halting me, started to explain something. 

"Yes, yes," I choked. "It's all very interesting, but I don't 
feel like stopping now!" I pulled away and made a break out the 
door. I was weeping horribly. My eyes felt as if someone had 
rubbed onion juice on them. They stung and burned for hours 
afterward. 

"The next time," said the instructor genially, "we'll put you 
through the mustard gas." 



122 GONDRECOURT 

Now in the mustard gas lesson a fellow must walk into the gas- 
house without his mask, and put it on after he has entered. If he 
fails to hold his breath long enough, or is nervous and clumsy and 
so doesn't get his mask on quickly enough, why it means a trip to 
the hospital for him. The mustard gas test is an ordeal which 
causes the boys considerable apprehension. 

"Oh thank you! You're very kind," I said. 

As we took our departure down the lull I noticed a darky dough- 
boy in a group who were drilling. He was in an awful fix; every 
time he tried to fasten the nose-clip on his nostrils, it would slip 
right off again! 

When the next lesson is held I have decided to be among the 
missing. 

GONDRECOURT JUNE 9. 

We have a new detail. His name is Jones. About six weeks 
ago he was kicked by a mule and had three of his ribs broken. He 
was sent to the hospital at Neufchateau. Learning that there was 
a chance that his battery might be sent to the front shortly, he 
pestered the docters until they let him go, his besetting fear 
being that he might become separated from his outfit. He re- 
turned three days ago. The next day he went out on the range as 
one of a gun crew. Yesterday he came into the hut and collapsed. 
The Secretary put him on his bed where he spent the rest of the 
day. Moved by purely altruistic motives, the Secretary then 
went to his captain and asked that Jones be assigned to the Y. as 
a supplementary detail. Now this is very nice for Jones, but I am 
not so sure whether it is nice for the Y. Jones, it seems, goes by 
the nick-name of "Mildred." At one period of his past life he was 
engaged in selling soap, a fact which inspires the boys to shout at 
frequent intervals: "Three cheers for Jones! Soap! Soap! Soap!" 
He brings echoes of his commercial training to the canteen counter. 
No east-side shopkeeper was ever more anxious to make sales than 
he. If a boy asks for tooth-paste when we happen to be out of it, 
he is sure to answer: 



THE ARTILLERY 123 

"No, but we have some very fine shoe polish." 

Or if somebody wants talcum powder when talcum there is none: 

"I'm sorry we're out of it today, but can't I interest you in 
some tomato ketchup?" 

Some day I think I shall write on essay on the psychology 
of suggestion as demonstrated in canteen sales. Nothing, it 
seems, ever really wins the boys' approval unless it bears the 
label; "Made in the U. S. A." — nothing that is, with the possible 
exception of eggs. Anything originating in Europe, from mustard 
to matches, is looked upon with a certain amount of suspicion, 
while goods coming from America are hailed with an enthusiasm 
often quite inconsistent with their quality. The other day we put 
a case of "Fig Newtons" on sale. The news flashed all over town. 
As one of the boys said; "Why it was just as if General Pershing 
or somebody's mother had come to camp." 

Lately we have had for sale quantities of fat French cookies. 
Some of the boys are mean enough to suggest that these were baked 
before the war. 

"Those cookies ought to wear service stripes," one boy declared. 

So "Service Stripe Cookies" they have been ever since. 

"They're all right for eating," observed another customer 
solemnly, "but the Lord help you if you drop one on your toe!" 

This morning when I reached the hut I found Jones languidly 
washing dishes. 

"Where's Neddy?" 

"Neddy? Why he's in the guard-house." 

For a moment I was goose enough to believe it, then I learned 
that Neddy, with a lieutenant and some twenty other boys, had 
all gone off, the day being Sunday, on single mounts to Domremy 
to visit the birthplace of Jeanne D'Arc. Late in the afternoon the 
little cavalcade returned. 

"Neddy," I teased, "I hear you've been in the guard-house." 

To my astonishment Neddy's mouth twitched, rnVeyes filled. 
"I wish I'd never gone!" he blurted out. 

"Why, what's the matter?" 



i2 4 GONDRECOURT 

Then the whole pitiful tale was unfolded. Neddy hadn't any 
money, not a clacker, and being too shy to ask for a loan, he had 
gone on the trip with empty pockets. 'He hadn't been able to buy 
himself a bite of dinner. But that wasn't what hurt. What hurt 
was that he couldn't purchase any souvenirs for his girl, and there 
had been so many enticing ones! 

"Gee," he moaned, "but that's an awful place for a feller to go 
who hasn't any money." 

Then, just as the last straw of misery, his horse had been taken 
sick on the way home! 

We are going through one of those painful periods of pecuniary 
depletion which are periodic in the army, the inevitable prelude 
to pay-day. In Battery A there are two lads whom I have privately 
dubbed Tweedledum and Tweedledee. They are both short, roly- 
poly and always smiling and they are absolutely inseparable. When 
either of them buys anything at the canteen he always buys double; 
two packets of cigarettes, two "bunches" of gum, two cups of hot 
chocolate "one for me and one for my friend" as the stock phrase 
goes. This morning I received a shock. Tweedledum asked for 
one bar of chocolate and one package of cigarettes. 

"What's the matter?" I asked, thinking alarmedly of how in 
the immortal poem "Tweedledum and Tweedledee agreed to have 
a battle," — "You and your buddy haven't quarrelled, have you?" 

"No ma'am, oh no indeed ma'am! It's just that it's an awful 
long ways from pay-day! " 

Later I saw them carefully dividing the purchases between them. 
I leaned over the counter, beckoned to Tweedledee. 

"You boys go around to the back door, but don't let anybody 
see you!" 

At the back door I gave them each a slice of Snow's latest lemon 
pie. 

Tonight the Major suddenly made his appearance in the kitchen 
to find Snow, Neddy and myself all sitting on the floor sorting out 
rotten oranges. Snow and Neddy faded away out the back door, 
but I stood my ground. For once his Majorship was pleased to be 



THE ARTILLERY 125 

gracious. He complimented me on the improvement in the appear- 
ance of my kitchen. Indeed we did look pretty fine, Neddy 
having just covered the shelves with newspapers whose edges 
he had cut into beautiful fancy scalloping. 

" What do you do with those over-ripe oranges?" 

"Put them in a box outside the back door." 

"Well? What then?" 

"The French children do the rest, sir." 

But the boys are more incensed than ever against the Powers 
That Be. They have been writing too many letters of late for the 
censor's comfort. So yesterday at Retreat the order was read out 
that no boy might write more than two letters and one postal card 
per week! 

GONDRECOURT, JUNE 13. 

The School has closed. It is common knowledge that the two 
batteries will soon join their respective regiments at the front. 
Curiously enough, here with the artillery I have never had that 
same feeling of closeness to the war which I had when I was with 
the doughboys. The attitude of the men here is so much more 
detached, impersonal. I fancy this is because, however dangerous 
their work may be, they do not look forward to any actual physical 
conflict. It is the imaginative image of "Heinie" with a bayonet 
thrusting at his breast which makes the front so vivid in antici- 
pation to the doughboy. 

But now with the news from Chateau Thierry there is a certain 
tenseness everywhere. One feels that the hour is close at hand 
when every man that Uncle Sam has in France may be needed. 
The barking of the guns at practice has taken on a new significance. 
Yesterday indeed it just missed implying tragedy. Shortly after 
the jarring thunder of the "75s" had started our dishes in the 
kitchen to rattling, came a frantic message by telephone. A party 
of engineers were surveying for the narrow-gauge railway just 
beyond the hill over which the battery was shooting. One shell 
had narrowly missed them. 



126 GONDRECOURT 

Today an aviator in a little Spad machine came down at our 
back door. He had lost his way, exausted his gas, and was forced 
to descend. He had thought he was over Germany so his relief 
on finding himself among friendly faces may be imagined. But 
aviation doesn't mean what it used to any more to us. We have 
lost our aviator. Shortly after I came to Gondrecourt we began 
to have an aerial visitor. Every few days about sundown he would 
appear; flashing up over the eastern hill horizon, to circle the big 
open drill ground, dipping, soaring, playing all manner of madcap 
tricks just for the sheer joy of it, now he would sweep so low as 
almost to touch the ridgepole of the hut, then up, up again with a 
rush, waving his hand to us below as we waved and shouted with 
all our might up at him. The whole camp would turn out to see; 
it was one of the events of the day. "It's Lufberry," some one told 
me. Not long ago we read in the paper that Major Lufberry had 
been killed. We waited in suspense. Had it really been he? Would 
our aviator never come again? Night after night we watched for 
him; he never came. 

The fields about, which have been golden with buttercups and 
primroses, white with daisies, and purple with flowers whose names 
I do not know, are now crimsoning with poppies. "Artillery 
flowers," the boys call them. They pick them and stick them 
jauntily in their overseas caps, or in great bunches, bring them 
to me to brighten the canteen. 

Since the boys are going soon I have been trying desperately 
to make them extra special goodies; candy, stuffed dates, frosted 
cookies, and — what pleases them as much as anything — hard- 
boiled eggs. It has been a revelation to me here in France, the 
American appetite for eggs. The boys will walk miles to get them; 
they will cheerfully pay as high as two dollars a dozen for them. I 
buy twelve dozen at a time, carry them out to the canteen and boil 
them in the dish-pan. Placed on sale they disappear in the wink- 
ing of an eye, and then the cry is always, "Ain't you got no more?" 
Sometimes I take Neddy with me on my shopping expeditions; 
Neddy carries my market basket, smokes his pipe and looks as 



THE ARTILLERY 127 

pleased as Punch. Today in our Quest we stopped in at a store 
kept by two extremely pretty Mademoiselles. As we entered we 
were greeted by peals of girlish laughter. In a chair in the corner 
sat a tired M. P. fast asleep, his mouth wide-open; between his 
lips one of the pretty girls had just at that moment popped a 
round ripe strawberry. 

GONDRECOURT, JUNE l8. 

Besides the American Camp Hospital there is a French Hospital 
at Gondrecourt, a place with a hint of old-world flavour to it, the 
nursing being done by Sisters of Charity. Here through some 
freak of chance a week ago arrived sixteen Tommies from the Eng- 
lish front, after having travelled half over the map of France. 
They were none too pleased to find themselves in a French Hospi- 
tal and several, being walking cases, straightway deserted and 
sneaked over to the American Hospital only to be regretfully re- 
turned again. They have a little Algerian in a red fez with them 
whom they have nicknamed "Charlie Chaplin." Although inter- 
course between them is restricted entirely to sign language, the 
Tommies have adopted Charlie as their mascot and Charlie follows 
them about just like a dog. 

My friend the English Lady, having little to do in her canteen 
since the School closed, has appointed herself as a sort of foster- 
mother to the whole cockney brood. She acts as interpreter and 
sometimes as intercessor, for the Tommies are impatient of the 
hospital discipline and cause the authorities frequent anxiety, 
helps the Sisters out in nursing them and, best of all, makes them 
tea at four o'clock or thereabouts, accompanying it with bread 
and butter sandwiches. Frankly, the Tommies think that they 
are little short of starved on the French Hospital rations, and the 
tea helps. When they can they sneak over to the American Hos- 
pital and beg a meal there, but such excursions are frowned upon 
by those in authority. 

Yesterday the English Lady gave a tea party for the Tommies 
in her canteen. She arranged to have a truck go fetch them. To 
her astonishment, instead of one, two trucks appeared and instead 



128 GONDRECOURT 

of just the Englishmen, the whole hospital that was able to stand 
on two legs or one arrived with them; big black Algerians and Mo- 
roccans in every shade of duskiness and poilus by the half score. 
The hut was crowded, there weren't enough chairs to go around. 
The English Lady sent out a hurry call to bring up the reserves 
in refreshments. Neddy and I came over from our hut with our 
arms full of cups; more water was put on to boil for the tea, new 
packages of biscuits opened. Then while the water heated the 
English Lady took all the liveliest ones out for a walk through the 
Chateau grounds, while " Skipper", her detail, who is a clever 
pianist, entertained the rest with music. During the playing one 
enormous Algerian, as black as night, stared fascinated at the piano, 
then edged slowly nearer and nearer to finally lay one incredulous 
finger, with infinite caution on one of the end keys. He had evi- 
dently never seen such a thing before, and more than half suspected 
it was all magic. 

Then the water boiled and we made the tea and carried cups 
and bowls of it around with canned milk and commissary sugar. 
The Frenchmen, true to type, with the scarcity of sugar in mind 
would only take one lump, until you invited them to have another, 
when each, with evident pleasure, took a second. As we could 
only muster six teaspoons between our two canteens to supply the 
whole company, we had to pass the spoons from guest to guest 
allowing each man just long enough for a good stir and then on to 
the next. The men with wounded arms got their neighbors to 
stir for them. With the tea we served sandwiches; these were a 
special treat to the poilus because they were made with American 
army bread. Now to my mind our white army bread is very poor 
and tasteless stuff in comparison with the grey well-flavored French 
war-bread, but the French, probably on account of the novelty, 
prize highly any scraps of the pain Americain that they can obtain. 
"Why, they eat it just like cake!" one boy said to me. Besides 
the sandwiches, there were little cookies and candies and cigarettes 
and finally, the gift of an American officer who happened in, an 
orange for each man to take home with him. 



THE ARTILLERY 129 

When the tea was finished it was time for the guests to go. 
Crowded into the trucks they rolled out through the Chateau 
gates, the poilus smiling and waving their good hands, while the 
Tommies raised a ragged cheer. 

As Neddy and I returned to our canteen we paused at the 
door of one of the barracks to listen to the band producing pan- 
demonium within. This band is the pet project of Battery D, 
the dearest hope of Corporal R. who is theatrical producer, 
impresario, librettist, base soloist, and band leader for the bat- 
tery. The instruments were finally assembled some ten days ago. 
The one thing required of a member seemed to be that he had 
never played that particular sort of an instrument before. For 
the last ten days the band has been practicing, mostly in the Y. 
They have always played the same tune, yet I have never been 
able to decide what that tune was. Now that the battery is going 
to the front, the instruments must be put in store and our bud- 
ding band disbanded almost before it had begun. The instruments 
are to be interned at Abainville, the town next door. When the 
day comes to relinquish them the band is going to march all the 
way from Gondrecourt to Abainville in state, playing their one 
tune over and over. 

Tonight Corporal R. sat on a barrel in the kitchen polishing 
his French horn with the Secretary's pink tooth-paste. It made 
excellent brass-polish he had discovered. 

"It's too bad you can't take that band of yours up front/' 
remarked Snow. 

"What for?" 

"'Cause it sure would make the boys feel like fighting." 

Gondrecourt June 22. 
The boys have gone! We saw the last battery off on the train 
tonight. The guns were loaded on flat cars, horses and men 
lodged together in the box cars, the boys sleeping under the 
horses' very noses and in danger of being nipped, it seemed to me, 
by an ill-tempered beast. The boys who were to sleep with the 



ISO 



GONDRECOURT 



guns on the flat cars would be much better off I thought; they had 
made themselves cozy little nests of straw underneath the gun- 
carriages. Some of the boys in the box cars, I was pained to ob- 
serve, had smuggled in bottles with them. 

The English Lady and I had arrived at the station none too 
soon. We had no more than walked the length of the train, in- 
specting each car and wishing every boy Good-bye and Good- 
luck when the engine whistled and was off. We stood on the 
platform and waved to the boys who leaned from their cars and 
waved back until a curve in the track cut off our sight. 

These last few days have been hectic. Wednesday was my 
birthday. Neddy found it out and told the boys. They had 
observed that I didn't have any raincoat; indeed rainy nights 
I was always embarrassed by the offer of half a dozen different 
rubber coats and ponchos to go home in; so they decided, — bless 
them! — to supply this lack. A crowd of noncoms went downtown; 
they took along one boy with them as a cloak model because he 
was about my height and " looked like a girl"; and they made him 
try on every raincoat in Gondrecourt. Finally they selected one, 
brought it back and made a ceremonious presentation. The 
raincoat is a beauty, and ever since I have worn it every day, 
rain or shine, just to show them how much I thought of it. 

It was hard to part with little Neddy. The Secretary presented 
him with a farewell pipe. I clasped around his neck a chain 
bearing a little silver cross; it was to keep him safe, body and soul 
from harm. He was almost moved to tears. The Secretary and 
I, he told me, had been "like a little papa and a daddy to him," 
and then, flushing, joined in my laughter. 

At the last moment one of the D Battery cooks came stealthily 
to the back door. 

"Me an the other fellers in the kitchen," he confided sotto 
voce, " we wanted to do something to show you folks how much 
we thought of you. So we just made up our minds to send yer 
this." 

This was a ten pound can of issue bacon. 



THE ARTILLERY 131 

The Secretary leaves tomorrow for Paris. He is going in order 
to buy himself some new clothes. It seems that all his belongings 
entrusted to the local laundresses disappeared one by one until 
he found himself reduced to a single set. Last night he washed 
these out himself and put them in the oven to dry. When he 
remembered them this morning it was to find nothing left but a 
little cinder heap. 

The camp, for the present at least, is to be abandoned; the hut, 
for the army wishes to use the barracks elsewhere, torn down. 
In a few days the little Artillery School Canteen will be nothing 
but a memory. 



CHAPTER V 

ABAINVILLE 

THE ENGINEERS 

Abainville July i. 

"Abainville is going to be bombed off the face of the map." 
Every time anyone has mentioned Abainville in my hearing during 
the last six weeks they have wound up with some such prophecy 
as this. Abainville is an engineering camp, Abainville is the start- 
ing-point for the narrow-gauge system that is to supply a certain 
sector of the American front. Already the great car shops have 
been built and stand gaunt and staring with more glass in their 
glittering sides than I have seen on this side of the Atlantic. It 
is these shops in particular that are held to be such shining marks 
for enemy aircraft. Anyway we have this comfort that if the Boche 
gets us we will all go together, for the town is so tiny that if a bomb 
hit it anywhere, it would wreck the major part of the village and 
there isn't a single cellar in the whole vicinity! 

Just at present Abainville is in a state of suspense. There is 
some question among those in high places as to whether after all 
the site, for such extensive operations as have been planned, is 
well selected. Work on the narrow-gauge goes on, but the work 
on the shops has been suspended. Everyone is anxiously awaiting 
the decision. 

The hut, which is on the far edge of the camp, is a huge empty 
shell, for work on this too has been stopped pending developments. 
Up till the day I arrived the Y. was doing business in a tent near 
the highway, but being notified that the engineers were going to 
run a railway through that spot the next day, they had moved 
out and over to the unfinished hut in a hurry. 

My billet has a fine central location,— at the corner of La Grande 



THE ENGINEERS 133 

Rue and the national highway that runs through the town. My 
window overlooks what approximates the town square, an open 
dusty space, bounded on the south by the principal cafe, on the 
east by the butcher's shop, on the west by manure-heaps and on 
the north by my billet. In this square, it appears, all the village 
pig-killings take place. It is incredible and painful how many pigs 
of a marketable maturity a town no larger than Abainville can 
produce. Arguing from the frequency of the pig-killings I am con- 
vinced that if a census were taken Abainville would be found to 
contain more pigs than people. 

Further down la Grande Rue one comes to the church and the 
town-hall. Upstairs in the Mairie my co-worker, Miss S., has her 
billet. Downstairs is the village school and the living apartments 
of the schoolmaster's family, refugees from the invaded territory. 
I peeped in at the empty schoolroom yesterday: on the wall was 
a large pictorial chart designed to impress upon the infant mind 
the advantages of drinking beer, cider and wine, rather than the 
more potent alcohols; a lesson vividly demonstrated by a series 
of cuts portraying a pair of guinea pigs. The guinea pig who in- 
dulged in cognac and kindred beverages was depicted in successive 
stages of inebriation until at the end he is shown expiring in all 
the horrors of delirium, while the prudent guinea pig who took 
nothing stronger than vin, Mere et cidre is pictured first in a state 
of mild and genial intoxication, and then the "morning after" 
with all the zest of a good digestion and a clear conscience, break- 
fasting on a sober cabbage leaf. 

The church next door to the Mairie is remarkable for nothing 
except the peculiar sound like a wheezing snore which may be 
heard every evening issuing from the belfry. At first this sound 
was a mystery to us. I inquired of Madame; she was blank. 

"Perhaps," I suggested remembering how in medieval lore evil 
spirits were reputed to haunt church towers, "perhaps it is the 
devil in the belfry." 

"But no!" cried Madame scandalized. "The devil doesn't live 
in Abainville!" 



i 3 4 ABAINVILLE 

"To be sure," I amended hastily, "the devil is a Boche! He 
lives at Berlin." 

11 Mais, out, out, ouil " 

But now the riddle has been read. The devil in the belfry is 
in reality an ancient owl, une chouette, who has inhabited the church 
tower time out of mind. 

There is a Salvation Army hut here, the first one I have seen. 
It is down by the main road; the canteen occupies one end of a 
barracks, which is used as a store-house, then there is an ell con- 
taining the kitchen. The staff comprises one man and two women; 
they are pleasant people, "real home folks." Two or three times 
a week, for supplies are hard to obtain, they make pie or cake or 
doughnuts. On these nights, passing the hut on our way back from 
mess, one sees a long Une stretching down the road, waiting pa- 
tiently for the chance to get a piece of pie "like Mother used to 
make." Our relationships are cordial. We help each other out 
in the matter of change. They come to our hut for sweet chocolate 
and movies; we go to them, when our consciences will permit, for 
doughnuts. I only wish that one of their huts could be in every 
camp in France. 

Abainville, July 8. 
By courtesy of a group of officers we are messing at a house 
with a particularly noisome front-door gutter and the Most Beauti- 
ful Girl in France to wait on us. La Belle Marguerite, as I always 
think of her, is tall and stately with a lovely gracious bearing and 
a sensitive, responsive face; what's more, she only paints a little. 
She affects to speak no English but I suspect she understands a 
good deal. At meal times when we are present the officers never 
look twice at her, but any evening that one happens past the house 
one can see two cigarette ends gleaming from the darkness just 
inside the mess-room window: the officers are making up for lost 
time. Yesterday La Belle looked so pale and distraite at dinner- 
time that I was quite distressed, fancying heart-break. "Mademoi- 
selle Marguerite is sad," I told Madame my hostess. Madame 



THE ENGINEERS 135 

immediately went forth on a visit of investigation. "Mademoi- 
selle has the tooth-ache!" she announced on her return. Today 
at dinner, having finished our salade, we waited in vain for dessert. 
La Belle Marguerite, usually so prompt and so efficient, simply 
did not appear. After waiting until I grew tired I gave it up and 
left. Passing by the kitchen door I glanced inside. In front of 
the hearth stood Marguerite and a handsome Russian officer, and 
oh! the coquetry of her eyes, the seduction of her smiling, scarlet 
lips! It was evident that the mess in the next room was wiped as 
clean from her mind as if it never had been! Whether my mess- 
mates ever got their dessert or not I haven't heard. 

Besides La Belle Marguerite, the one unique feature of our mess 
is a certain set of plates. These are French picture plates with 
jokes on them. The jokes are all of a gustatory nature and pertain 
to things which most people would prefer not to think about while 
they are eating. One rather striking design represents the pro- 
prietor of a Swiss resort hotel delicately sniffing a platter of fish 
as he says to the waitress: 

"These trout are passe. Keep them for the customers who 
have colds in their heads." 

On another an irate diner is exclaiming over an item on his 
bill: 

"Three francs for a chicken! What's that?" 

"Why that was the little chicken that Monsieur found in his 

egg!" " 

There is always an anxious moment of suspense whenever a 
guest comes to dinner, a moment in which one peeps furtively out 
of the corners of one's eyes to see whether the newcomer has 
noticed the picture on his plate, and if so, whether he has got the 
point. Sometimes the guest will ask to have the text translated 
for him and then there is an awkward pause. 

The question of what to serve at the canteen is a vexed one 
these days as it is quite too hot for chocolate. By scouring the 
country we managed to procure several cases of lemons, and then 
found our work for the day laid out, — just squeezing them. A few 



136 ABAINVILLE 

days ago, however, a shipment of bottled fruit juices arrived at 
the warehouse; by mixing this syrup with water and a small 
amount of lemon a delicious drink can be obtained. The boys 
have dubbed it a dozen different names, " Camouflage vin rouge" 
being one of them, but "pink lemonade" is the title it commonly 
passes under. Already it has become famous and every drunk in 
camp if questioned as to how he came to be in that condition will 
unblushingly assert that it was through drinking "that Y. M. C. A. 
pink lemonade." 

If we could only get ice! Yesterday I investigated the pos- 
sibilities, to find that if one were very ill and in desperate need of 
it, could produce a certificate to that effect signed by half a dozen 
doctors, approved by the Sanitary Inspector, passed upon by the 
local Board of Health and sealed by the Mayor with the sanction 
of the Town Council, one could, by means of this document, 
procure at the brewery at Gondrecourt a piece of ice about as 
large as a small-sized egg. Somehow it doesn't seem quite worth 
the trouble. 

Lacking ice, we do our best with freshly ' drawn water which 
comes pleasantly cool from the deep wells drilled by American 
engineers to supply the camp, — when it does come. But often 
just when the thirsty ones are crowding thickest you make a 
frantic dash to the faucet only to find that the supply has been cut 
off: there is not enough water in the wells, it seems, to supply all 
the engines and pink lemonade besides for the whole camp. Then 
there is nothing to do but to take a pail and set out. After climb- 
ing over a couple of freight trains and ploughing through a dozen 
cinder heaps one comes at last to the pump-house, where one may, 
by assuming an ingratiating manner, beg a pailful, — strictly 
against the regulations, — from the man at the pump. And then, 
after all, what use is a mere pailful of lemonade in a thirsty camp? 

Abainville, July io. 
We have stopped fighting the war and have gone into the movie 
business. For two days all work has been suspended while the 



THE ENGINEERS 137 

camp has posed before the camera. They are making a big prop- 
aganda film for use in the States, entitled " America's Answer to 
the Hun" and Abainville and the Abainville-Sorcy narrow-gauge 
is to be part of that answer. "Camouflage pictures" sneer the 
boys, and camouflage pictures I blush to say they frankly are. 
For on the screen the peaceful valley through which the narrow- 
gauge is being built is to masquerade as a field of battle. Cam- 
ouflaged engineers, armed and equipped as infantry will march 
valiantly across the landscape, while other engineers in helmets, 
with their gas-masks at the alert, are plying their picks and shovels 
amid the smoke of camouflage shrapnel; the climax being attained 
when the helmeted engineers effect a lightning repair feat by 
bridging over a carefully dug camouflage shell-hole. 

Yesterday I saw a photograph cut from the Sunday Supplement 
of one of America's best known and most respected newspapers. 
Underneath the picture ran the text, "American boys playing 
base-ball on a field in France where shells fall daily." To my 
certain knowledge the only shells that have ever fallen on that 
field or within many miles of it are peanut shells. For the field in 
the picture is most plainly and indisputably the Y. athletic field 
at Gondrecourt. Will I ever, I wonder, recover my pre-war faith 
in newspapers and photographs and movies and such things? 

But now we have done our turn before the camera, it's back to 
work again and very hard work at that, for the officers are de- 
termined to set a record for all the world in laying track. Already 
the little railway has shot ahead at an amazing rate; though 
whether track laid in such a hurry is really going to make for speed 
in the long run is a question on which the trainmen, sipping their 
pink lemonade at the canteen counter^ have their own opinions. 
For no train, it seems, can make the run at present without leav- 
ing the track at least once during the journey. " Sun- trouble " 
say 'the officers, which means, being interpreted, that the heat of 
the sun's rays has warped the rails. "Sun trouble nothin,'" 
grunt the men. "It's just not takin' the time to do the job decent." 
When the " sun trouble " doesn 't serve to throw a train off the track, 



i 3 S ABAINVILLE 

the French children see to it that the same effect is produced by 
the simple expedient of dropping spikes in between the ends of 
adjoining rails. 

Yesterday I was talking with an engineer from Tours. He and 
his fireman had just brought a Belgian engine up from that city 
for use in the Abainville yards. The attitude of the train crew 
who received it was plainly "thank-you-for-nothing-sirs!", Bel- 
gian engines being none too popular with A. E. F. railroad men. 
The two crews sat in the hut for a long while holding a symposium 
over the Belgian engine's oddities; at last the home crew departed, 
looking very glum. In the course of my subsequent conversation 
with the visiting engineer I happened to ask: 

"Would you vote for Pershing for president?" 

"No sir!" he answered emphatically. "All the railroad men 
over here have got it in for him." He went on to explain. 

French railroad engineers are allowed a certain amount of 
coal and oil with which to make their runs; for anything that they 
can save out of this, they are reimbursed. This idea appealed to 
the American train crews who were attached to the French. They 
set to work and saved, — far more than the French were able to! 
The French proceeded to depreciate the quality of coal allowed 
them, instead of giving them half dust and half briquets, they 
gave them three-quarters dust and finally all dust yet still the 
Americans were able to beat the French at saving. And each man 
in fancy was rolling up a tidy little sum for himself. 

"And then," continued my informant, "Pershing came out and 
said that we weren't here to make money off the French, but to 
help them, so we weren't to get the money for all the coal and 
oil we had saved after all. And that's why there isn't a railroad 
man in France who has any use for him." 

How much of politics could be reduced, I wonder, to a mere 
question of pocket-book? 

He went on to tell me among other things that although a 
French conductor would be furious if you stopped a train in the 
middle of a run for any other reason, if you just said; "Come 



THE ENGINEERS 139 

on, oF top, and have a bottle of vin rouge on me," he was all beam- 
ing acquiescence. "Just imagine," he concluded disgustedly, 
"stopping a main-line train in America so the crew could go into 
a saloon and get a drink!" 

Abainville, July 14. 

The Bastille has fallen! We celebrated its fall today with much 
enthusiasm. Ostensibly in order to signalize the Franco- American 
Alliance, the festivities in reality were planned as propaganda of 
a different sort. Surreptitiously but quite definitely the end and 
aim of them was to flatter the Major. 

Now the Major in command of the camp at Abainville is what — 
if he weren't a major — one would be tempted to term a "hard- 
boiled guy." Being of the old school he looks with a jaundiced 
eye at all welfare organizations, particularly, I gather, at the femi- 
nine element in them. He calls the college men in the regiment 
"sissy boys" and believes in treating them to an extra dose of pick 
and shovel. What's more, it is an open secret 'that he would like 
to swap the whole outfit of them for a regiment of Mexican des- 
peradoes, with whom he has had considerable experience. As the 
boys say, he speaks three languages, English, Mexican and Pro- 
fane, and of the three he is the most proficient in the last. 

So in view of all this, the Fourteenth of July celebration was 
gotten up chiefly in order to give the Major a chance to appear in all 
his glory and make a speech, this being, it is claimed, one of the 
surest ways to tickle the vanity and so win the heart of a man. 

We decorated the half-finished hut with flags and bunting, 
screening the yawning cavern back of the stage with broad strips 
of red, white and blue cheesecloth. Then we officially invited the 
whole town to attend. The whole town, from grandmother to 
baby, came dressed in their Sunday best. The programme started 
with an informal concert by an impromtu jazz orchestra varied 
by some Harry Lauder impersonations delivered by an unexpected 
youth who somehow strayed on to the stage. For a few moments 
we were painfully uncertain as to whether the effect produced was 
due just to Harry Lauder or to vin rouge, finally deciding that a 



i 4 o ABAINVILLE 

share at least of the credit should be allowed the latter. Fortu- 
nately Harry's appearance on the stage was short; he left us fondly 
hoping that the French hadn't realized anything was amiss. 

The Major of course opened the formal programme. He read 
his speech. It wasn't a bad speech, representing, as it did, the 
combined efforts of one captain, two lieutenants and the clerk in 
the Headquarters office, and was sufficiently fiery in its reference 
to the Germans to be quite in keeping with the Major's character. 
The Major sat down amid thunderous applause. The Secretary 
had vainly tried to arrange to have a little girl present him with a 
bouquet at the end of his speech : perhaps it was just as well the way 
it was, — a bouquet might have proved embarrassing to the Major. 
When the applause had died down the Major's interpreter stepped 
out and gave a brief summary of the address in French for the bene- 
fit of the villagers. Then we had the Mayor of Abainville and after 
him the Cure, looking very handsome in his beautiful French 
officer's uniform. They both delivered flowery speeches, enlarging 
upon the mutual affections of the two nations, which were trans- 
lated briefly into English by the interpreter for the benefit of the 
Americans. 

After the speeches the school children, who had been fidgeting 
about like so many little crickets in their front-row seats, swarmed 
up on the stage and, standing in a long line with flag-bearers at 
each end, sang the Marseillaise in their funny shrill little voices. 
Then we all sang the Star Spangled Banner, and after that there 
was a movie. As luck would have it, instead of an adventure of 
the western plains, fate had sent us a romance of high finance. 
We had asked the interpreter to announce the titles of the pictures 
in French for the benefit of the villagers but when he discovered 
that this meant making clear the intricacies of the New York Stock 
Exchange to the mind of the French peasant, he baulked and bolted. 
It must have been just about as intelligible to them as Coptic, 
yet they sat tight and at least looked interested. 

Everybody considers the affair a success. The Secretary was 
in high spirits over the evening. 



THE ENGINEERS 141 

"The Major was pleased, I'm sure," he declared. "As for the 
French, it was an occasion which they will always remember. Why 
it was just like transplanting the whole village there. The grand- 
mother and the babies, the mayor, the priest, the school-teacher 
and his scholars; every village institution was represented!" 

"Everything," I said — I was tired, "but the pig-killings." 

Abainville, July 20. 

I have just established what I think must be the smallest "hut" 
in France, and such fun as it was doing it! 

There is a detachment of about a hundred engineers stationed, 
while they build the narrow-gauge railway, at a little village about 
ten miles to the north, called Sauvoy. The other day I went with 
the Athletic Director in a side-car to take them some base-ball 
equipment. The boys I found were billeted in dark dingy 'lofts 
and had to eat their meals, rain or shine, sitting just anywhere in 
the streets of the village. The thought came to me; why shouldn't 
they too have a Y? I approached the French Town Major, 
taking the barber-interpreter with me to lend me both moral and 
lingual support. After some uncertainty he admitted that there 
was a room which might be made to serve, a room over a stable to 
be sure, but a good room for all that; the rent would be thirteen 
sous a day, — I snapped it up. 

Yesterday with all my materials assembled I started out for 
Sauvoy again. We began work a little before noon, myself and 
four engineers. Before the afternoon was over we had changed a 
filthy loft, its grimy walls covered with obscene scrawls, into as 
cunning a little pocket-edition Y. as one could find I think in France. 
Sweeping the dust and cobwebs from the rafters, we calcimined 
the ceiling and walls a pretty creamy yellow; filled in the missing 
panes with vitex'/hung curtains of beautiful blue and green chintz 
at the windows; laid runners of the same across the tables lent with 
the benches by the Major du Cantontnejit; jiecomted the walls, 
half-dry as they were, with stunning French posters; built shelves 
in the alcove corner where the built-in bed had been, filled them 



i 4 2 ABAINVILLE 

with books, games and writing materials; hung two big green Jap- 
anese lanterns from the beam in the center; and last of all put bowls 
of the loveliest flowers, larkspurs and snapdragons, begged by the 
boys from the village gardens, on the shelves and tables, together 
with heaps of fresh magazines and the company victrola. In the 
midst of all the scurry and hurry a red-faced frowsy Frenchwoman 
marched in upon us. She stalked across the room and tried the 
door which led into the hay-loft: we had nailed it fast. We must 
open that 'door immediately, she declared, otherwise she could 
not get the hay to feed the horse downstairs. I saw my pretty 
room used as a passageway by a beery old termagant and my 
heart sank. After some discussion, however, our visitor proposed 
an alternative. If we would supply her with a ladder, she could 
climb up into the loft from below. But how, I asked helplessly, 
was I to get a ladder? One of the boys winked at me and disap- 
peared; ten minutes later he was back dragging a ladder after him. 
Our French friend was satisfied. 

"But how did you get it?" I asked wonderingly. 

He looked at me reprovingly. "In this Man's Army," he re- 
marked, "you should learn not to ask such questions." 

When the last touch had been bestowed there was still an hour 
before the truck which was to take me home was slated for depar- 
ture. Someone suggested a visit to the Chateau. So the Top 
Sergeant, the barber-interpreter, the Town Major and I all set 
out together. 

The Chateau at Sauvoy is & fifteenth century Chateau, cut 
out of an old picture-book, surrounded by a high wall and just 
about big enough for two. One enters, oddly enough, through 
the kitchen which is enormous and like a Dutch genre painter's 
"Interior," with a cobble-stone floor, an eight-foot fireplace, 
dried herbs and vegetables hanging from the rafters and every- 
where on the long shelves, the soft gleam of pewter and the mellow 
tones of old china-ware. From the kitchen one steps into a tiny 
dining-room panelled in dark carved wood with a bird-cage, empty 
now, built into the wall. Beyond this is the salon with a wonder- 



THE ENGINEERS 143 

ful old tapestry stretched across one of its walls and some ex- 
quisite Louis Quinze chairs in which kings and queens might have 
sat. 

But the best thing about the Chateau is the Chatelain, an old 
French gentleman, eighty-nine years of age, the last of his family, 
who lives all alone, except for one antique serving-woman, in this 
beautiful dim old mansion, wears sabots, keeps bees for a living, 
and every day of his life cuts from the journal the little daily 
English lesson, pastes it in a tiny note-book, and then his poor 
old eyes an inch from the paper, cons the words over and over, 
reading them aloud with such a pronunciation! 

"In three months," he told us proudly, "I am going to be an 
American." 

He related to us how in 1870 the town was invaded by the 
Germans and he taken prisoner. But the Germans were gentlemen 
then and treated him humanely; he couldn't understand what had 
changed them to such savage beasts. He took us out and showed 
us his precious bees. We went through the garden, a charming 
place with little box hedges and rose bushes and currant bushes 
and gooseberries all growing together in the true French style. 
Beyond we came to an open oblong of greensward edged by trees 
with fifty hives ranged around it, the hives, — of all quaint con- 
ceits — being made like little Chinese houses, each one different 
from the rest, each painted red and ( blue, a 1 bit shabby and worn 
by time, but still gay and jaunty nevertheless. Monsieur guar- 
anteed us that the bees wouldn't sting, they weren't bad bees he 
said, so we consented to be led about to each hive in turn and 
peered in through the little glass windows at the bees ^making 
honey. Sad to say, this is a bad year for sweets and instead of 
hundreds of pounds of honey, there will be scarcely one to sell. 

We went back through the garden 'and here Monsieur must 
gather a bouquet for 'me. Around and about the garden he hur- 
ried, going to every bush in turn, putting his poor dim eyes down 
into the very leaves of each, searching for just what he wanted; 
and finally it was done, pink and white roses, red geraniums, 



144 ABAINVILLE 

camomile and white pinks, made up in a little stiff bunch and tied 
with a bit of scarlet string. Then he must present it with a deep 
bow and a gallant speech "from an old Frenchman to line jolie 
Americaine", while all the rest, including the ancient maid-servant 
who had just returned from the fields with an apron full of clover 
for the rabbits, stood about and applauded and cried "Vive la 
France!" and then "Vive V Amerique!" in a quite truly stage 
manner. 

We left the little Y. in charge of a boy from the Medical Corps. 
He has little to do except dispense pills to the French people, so 
he was willing to look after it. 

This morning word came in from Sauvoy that the Germans 
bombed it last night. Luckily the bombs, evidently aimed at the 
railroad, fell just outside the village and did no harm; but poor old 
Monsieur must have gotten a bad fright. 

Abainville, August i. 

Abainville's future is at last assured. Work upon the hut 
has been resumed. The buzz of barracks-building fills all the 
place, the 'railroad yards gradually but relentlessly 'encroach; 
little by little they are ruining the most beautiful poppy field in all 
the world. 

Meanwhile our family too has grown. A few days ago three new 
companies of engineers arrived in town. These are draft troops 
from Texas and Oklahoma, in camp for only a few weeks in the 
States, shipped here directly from the base port, and so green to 
France that they don 't even know what oui oui means. On the trip 
here one of these boys, they tell, after gazing out the door of his 
"side-door pullman" in silence half the morning, remarked dis- 
gustedly; 

"This is a hell of a country! " 

"What's the matter?" 

"Why all the stations have got the same name!" 

"The hell they have! What's the name?" 

"Sortie!" 



THE ENGINEERS 145 

The Major in command of the new arrivals proves to be an old 
and none too amicable acquaintance of our Major's, their mutual 
esteem having been obscured by a law-suit some time in the past 
which resulted in our Major's being forced to part with a consider- 
able sum of money. To make himself more welcome the new 
Major has introduced innovations. Up till now, in accordance 
with our Major's theories, we have been a strictly business com- 
munity, our energies concentrated chiefly upon what the boys 
call P. and S. — pick and shovel. But now with the coming of the 
new detachment we have blossomed out with all sorts of military 
frills. Armed sentinels marching their beats in a military manner 
fairly encumber the camp. One is halted and challenged a half- 
dozen times on one's way home from the canteen at ten o'clock in 
the evening. I am startled out of my dreams in the middle of the 
night by shouts of, "Corporal of the Guard, Post Number Four!'' 
under my very window. And the best part of it is that these 
"Long Boys," never having had so much as the A-B-C of 
military training, make the drollest imitations of real soldiers 
that ever were. The atmosphere at Headquarters has of late, I 
gather, been slightly tinged with electricity. But the boys belong- 
ing to the older organizations in camp have been enjoying them- 
selves to an unholy degree "stuffing" the new arrivals with ghastly 
tales of air-raids, gas bombs, and aerial machine-gun barrages. 

As in all huts, we have a big map of France tacked to the wall 
where the boys can have easy access to it. After one of these maps 
has been up a short while, it is always a simple matter when glanc- 
ing at it, to locate one's self — one has only to look for a dirty 
spot; a little later, countless more grimy fingers having in the 
meantime been applied, one looks for the hole. Yesterday one 
of our new friends came to me and asked: 

"Please, 'Ma'am, could you tell me where that there place, 
'No Man's Land' that they talk about in the papers is? I've 
been a-lookin' an' a-lookin' an' I can't find it on the map nowhere." 

Along with the new engineers Nanny arrived in town. Nanny 
is an Alabama goat, smuggled on board the transport wrapped up 



i 4 6 ABAINVILLE 

in one of the boys' overcoats. Her fleece is pure white and she is 
fat as a little butter-ball. Already she is one of our most dis- 
tinguished citizens. Possessed of an adventurous spirit, she 
makes herself free of every house in town, being particularly fond 
of climbing stairs and appearing at unsuspected moments in odd 
corners of one's billet. Madame explains the attraction here: 
"She smells an American, you see!" which is a quaint thought. 
Nanny is the pet detestation of the Adjutant, for she has a pen- 
chant for straying into his office and nibbling at every paper with- 
in reach. Already several valuable documents have disappeared 
down her greedy little throat. Last night, in revenge, one of the 
boys in the Adjutant's office, armed with a pot of bright red paint, 
painted Nanny in "dazzle" designs. Today she is a sight. 

This morning I was puzzled to observe that a considerable 
number of the newcomers were wearing pink tickets in their hats. 

"What's that?" I asked. 

" Them? Them's meal tickets! " They explained ; the report had 
gone around that the chow of one of the companies was of super- 
ior quality; immediately the chow line of that same company had 
assumed an inordinate length. The mess sergeant, unable, since 
the company was so new, to distinguish his own men from the 
self-invited guests, had found it necessary to attach tags to the 
company. 

With the coming of the new engineers, the sale of one article 
in stock has swelled to unprecedented quantities. One member of 
the force is fairly kept busy from morning until night cutting off 
chunks of chewing tobacco. Texas and Oklahoma, it seems, have 
unlimited capacities for this commodity. Now with all due re- 
spect to the honourable American tribe of chewers, this indulgence 
raises a very delicate question for the canteen lady in whose 
charge rests the appearance of the hut. The scrap-boxes are 
already in a bad way, I frankly advocate spittoons, but our 
detail, who is a very superior lad, known among his cronies as 
"The Infant" because of his pink cheeks and innocently solemn 
air, flatly refuses. There are some things, he declares, to which 



THE ENGINEERS 147 

he will not stoop, and he grows very stiff and red in the face if I 
hint at it. 

"I have discussed the matter," he told me yesterday, "with 
several very eminent chewers, and they all agree that there isn't 
the slightest necessity for their behaviour!" 

There may not be any necessity, — how am I to judge? But 
there is a very actual and urgent state of affairs. And what is one 
to do about it? 

Abainville, August 13. 

The hut is finished. Now if at any time Marshal Foch or Gen- 
eral Pershing or President Poincare should happen this way, we 
could say: Come in, gentlemen, and behold us; don't we look nice? 

The main part of the hut, the big auditorium, is done in creamy 
yellow and brown with rafters of bright blue, the windows hung 
with curtains of sumptuous orange chintz. The writing-room is 
blue and yellow too, with green and yellow curtains on which, 
in a bower of branches, black-birds perch; runners of the same 
material He across the writing tables, the practical advantage of 
this pattern being that whenever anyone spills a bottle of ink on a 
runner, it merely gives the effect of one more black-bird. In each 
window of the writing-room is a little pot with a scarlet geranium, 
while the walls of both writing-room and auditorium are bright 
with beautiful French posters. 

But the best of all the hut, to my mind at least, is the Tea Room, 
— so-called until we think of something better to name it, — for the 
Tea Room was my own particular pet scheme. According to the 
plans, the ell behind the canteen counter was cut up into half a 
dozen little rooms. By eliminating part of the central hall, the 
"mess-room" and the "ladies' room" and moving the office out 
to an unused corner by the movie machine booth, we got space 
for a fair-sized room connected by a serving-window with the 
kitchen. Our matched lumber having run short we used rough 
lumber and covered it with burlap; each strip was a different weave 
and texture, to be sure, but all the same it was burlap! The wood- 



148 ABAINVILLE 

work and little tables we painted a bright green, hung vivid 
green curtains at the windows, then, taking the covers of chewing 
tobacco boxes, stained these green too, pasted in the centre of each 
a bright little water-color reproduction cut from an English art 
magazine, tacked them up on the walls, and voild! as pretty a 
little room as could be found short of Paris! 

In the Tea Room we serve pink lemonade, hot chocolate, jam 
sandwiches, cookies and canned fruit. The boys are living on a 
diet of what they call " goat's meat" at present; — whenever it is 
time for a chow line to form you can hear a chorus of bleats and 
baas hah across the camp, — and so sick of this have they become 
that many will sup off chocolate and sandwiches in the Tea Room 
by preference. Yesterday I took a chance and tried making a ten 
gallon boiler full of raspberry tapioca pudding, using the bottled 
fruit juice. At first the boys were inclined to be cautious. 

"What do you call that?" 

"How would raspberry slum do?" 

"Well, I'll try anything once!" 

But after the first taste it went all too fast. 

"Say, are there any seconds on this?" 

"Lady," said one lad solemnly to me, "with pudding like that 
I could stay four years more in the army." 

One of the divisions from the lines arrived in this area, a few 
days ago, for a short period of rest. A number of the men are 
encamped up on the hill near the old Artillery School and they 
come straying down to our hut. Poor lads, it is pitiful to see how 
wonderful it seems to them to be in a place that is clean and pretty. 

"This looks like a bit of heaven to me," declared one boy. 

Another, sitting in the Tea Room stirring his chocolate, com- 
mented, 

" Gee, this is a swell place in here. You ought ter get some fancy 
name for it." 

"What would you suggest?" 

"Well I should think," he looked around, "you might call it 
Canary Cottage." 



THE ENGINEERS 149 

Yet occasionally I wonder if it really all pays, as when I pick 
out the cigar butts which, in spite of the trash boxes beneath the 
tables, the boys will persist in sticking in the vases of flowers and 
planting in the geranium pots, or when, as last night, I catch a 
fellow using one of the beautiful chintz runners from the tables 
with which to wipe the mud off his boots. 

Abainville, August 21. 
Talk kills men. 

Don't talk. The walls have ears. 

Keep mum, let the guns talk for you. 

Thus are we placarded. Every hut, every cafe, every garage, 
every place of any sort where the A. E. F. may meet together and 
indulge in conversation, now bears a board with some such legend 
printed on it and after each terse warning is the terser admonition; 
Read G. O. 39. A campaign of silence is on foot. These catchy 
phrases, American variations on the classic French line: Taisez 
vous, tnefiez vous, les oreilles ennemies vous ecoutent! — Be still, be- 
ware, the ears of the enemy are listening! — are to be perpetual re- 
minders to us that we are all too prone to gossip indiscreetly. 

As to just what one may say and mustn't say, I for one confess, 
not having read G. O. 39, that I am in a quandary. I find myself 
hesitating before mentioning the fact that we had baked beans for 
dinner. As for talking about the weather, why that leads naturally 
to the subject of moonlight nights, and moonlight nights, as every 
one knows, now imply not romance but air-raids and air-raids are 
of course a tabooed topic. Indeed I am beginning to have a sneak- 
ing conviction that perhaps it would be better to discard speech 
entirely and take to conversing in dumb show. 

Sometimes some small thing that comes to one's attention will 
crystallize a difference between two races so sharply as to be start- 
ling. This 'was impressed on me the other day by two posters. 
Both the French land American authorities have recently issued 
warnings to their soldiers concerning the practice of riding on the 



150 ABAINVILLE 

tops of railroad cars, since this habit has led to a number of casual- 
ties. The French poster reads something like this: 

Whereas it has been brought to the attention of the Commissioner 
of Railroads, that various accidents have occurred resulting from 
the practice indulged in by soldiers of obtruding a portion or the 
whole of their bodies beyond the limits of the car; it is urgently 
requested that the soldiers in transit upon the railroad should 
henceforth restrict themselves to the interior of the cars. 

The American sign runs thus: 

"If you want to see the next block, keep yours inside! Your 
head may be hard but it's not as hard as concrete!" Pithily it 
states the number of casualties resulting from this trick, explains 
that the French bridges and tunnels only allow six inches clearance 
above the top of the cars, and ends; 

"Your life may not be worth anything to you, but it may cost 
your country $10,000." 

But the triumph of American sign art, a specimen of which hangs 
in the Adjutant's office, is the gas-defense poster. It starts off 
with the Gas School slogan: 

"There are two classes of men in a gas attack, the quick and the 
dead," proceeds to poetry: 

"The hard-boiled guy said gas was bunk, 

It couldn't hurt you, only stunk 

The hard-boiled guy went up the line, 
Fritz spilled the mustard good and fine; 
And now some people wonder why 
It's flowers for the hard-boiled guy," 

and ends with the admonition that seems a little ironical to one 
who must struggle to make green wood burn in a broken-down 
French range; "Cook with it, don't croak with it." 

To-day we put up a sign all of our own over the counter. For 
some reason, transportation probably, there has been a most dis- 
tressing lack of supplies in this area recently. Not only are we 
suffering, but the Salvation Army and even the sales commis- 



THE ENGINEERS 151 

saries have all been stricken with the same famine. Indeed I was 
told of one commissary which bore the warning; "We have salt, 
mustard and baking powder. That's all." Tired of replying several 
hundred times a day; "I'm awfully sorry but we haven't any 
so-and-so," I made a sign which was a list of all the "haven't gots" 
and tacked it up over the counter. Thinking to be funny I in- 
cluded strawberry ice-cream among the rest, to be promptly pun- 
ished by an innocent-eyed youth who inquired hopefully; "What 
kind of ice-cream have you got? " 

Another boy read through the list once, twice, then looked up 
at the Infant disgustedly. 

"Why don't you put 'Hell!' at the bottom of it?" he queried. 
" 'Pears to me it would be easier to make a list of the things 
you have got," suggested another. 

A little while longer and if no help comes, we shall be doing this. 
I can see that sign in my mind's eye now. It 'will read something 
like this: 

We have 
chewing tobacco 
indelible pencils 

and 
shaving brushes 

Abainville, September 2. 
Once a month, according to schedule, the whole personnel of 
the division is summoned to Y. Headquarters at Gondrecourt for 
a conference. Formerly these conferences were largely religious in 
significance, consisting of much righteousness with a slight leaven 
of business. Each one in turn was looked forward to as a pious but 
unprofitable duty and evaded when possible, — which wasn't often. 
Now with a change in the directorship the conferences have taken 
on an almost entirely practical tone. Incidentally they have 
gained amazingly in popularity. For now one can attend a con- 
ference with confidence that during its progress one will surely 
glean more than one quaint bit of human comedy. 



152 ABAINVILLE 

Today it was the Aviation Camp Secretary who supplied most 
of the spice. This is an odd but very earnest little man whom I 
shall always remember as I saw him at the Gondrecourt railway 
station last May, starting for Paris dressed up in a "tin hat" and 
a gas mask. Whether this was in order to bluff Paris into thinking 
that he had come straight from the front, or whether this was to 
protect himself against the assaults of Big Bertha while in the city, 
I could not determine, but never since have I been able to take the 
gentleman quite seriously. 

The Aviation Secretary created the first sensation by rising 
suddenly to his feet and reading a motion to the effect that the 
Gondrecourt Division of the Y. M. C. A. should go on record as 
registering a protest against " the wicked state of the Paris streets," 
citing Mr. Edward Bok and his action in the case of the streets 
of Liverpool. For a moment no one said a word, then a secretary 
arose and requested that the motion be amended to read more 
clearly, as in its present form it might be taken to refer to the 
condition of the paving, or the criminal recklessness of the taxi 
drivers. The Warehouse Man then solemnly proposed that in view 
of Mr. Bok a ruling should be passed that while in Paris all sec- 
retaries should be required to travel by the subway or in a cab. I 
wanted to ask if it wouldn't do just as well if special prayers 
should be offered for each secretary on his departure for the wicked 
city, but refrained. 

No sooner had the excitement over the Paris streets subsided, 
than the Aviation Secretary was on his feet again with a second 
resolution. This was in effect a petition to the Paris office that 
they send us proportionately less tobacco and more sweets for sale 
in the canteens. This precipitated a fiery argument, the smokers 
lined up against the non-smokers. Listening to the non-smokers 
you became convinced that the manhood of America was on its 
way to ruin through excessive cigarettes; listening to the smokers 
you became equally certain that the war would be won by tobacco 
smoke. The situation became so tense one could almost see the 
sparks in the air. In the end the smokers had it. 



THE ENGINEERS 153' 

The next thrill was caused by one of the women workers who in 
the course of a speech took occasion to deprecate the house- 
keeping abilities of the men secretaries. On Fourth of July, she 
declared, when the chocolate cups from all over the area had been 
sent into Gondrecourt for the celebration there, some of them had 
been discovered to be in a shocking state. These had later been 
traced to a hut where there was no woman worker. Instantly the 
Aviation Secretary Was up again. This charge 'was a personal 
matter, he declared, as the cups in question had been his. How- 
ever he denied the implication. The cups had been perfectly clean 
when they left the hut, they must have become soiled en route. 
And so the conference comedy is played out. 

At the town of X. there is a secretary who declares he is de- 
voting his life to the service of the Lord. Some years ago he 
found himself becoming deaf. So he told the Lord that if He 
would restore his hearing he would spend the rest of his days in 
performing good works. He was cured. Last week he created a 
corner on eggs in this vicinity by buying one hundred and twenty- 
five dozen at five francs per. Now he is reselling them for six. 
Wanting eggs badly to make custard for some sick boys here, and 
not being able to obtain them any other way, I walked over to X. 
and bought two dozen. When I got home I counted them, there 
were just twenty-three. Surely the Lord got the worst of that 
bargain! 

Abainville, September 9. 

Something is going to happen. 

We have been used to seeing the French Army go by; intermin- 
able fines of camions, so many feet apart, rolling through the town 
for hours on end. Sometimes we have seen a section pass through 
on its way to the front, only to return again some ten days later. 
Once seen, a French camion train is never forgotten, for each 
automobile section bears painted on its sides the distinctive 
insignia of the unit. These are sometimes droll, sometimes senti- 
mental, but always cleverly designed and usually striking,— 



iS4 ABAINVILLE 

a poilu drinking pinard from his canteen, a pelican, a polar bear, 
a dancing monkey, a soldier embracing a peasant girl, a grinning 
Algerian's head in ear rings and a red fez, a gendarme holding up 
a threatening club. 

But now by day, by night, it is the Americans who are passing 
through, their faces set toward the front, on troop-trains, in 
camions, on foot. Coming home from the canteen in the evening 
one hears the heavy rattle that means artillery on the move, and 
standing by the road-side peering through the darkness one can 
just discern horses and caissons, slat-wagons, supply- wagons and, 
looming ominously in the dim light, the formidable bulk of the 
great guns. 

Night before last I was awakened by the sound of troops pas- 
sing, a regiment of infantry on the march. I lay and listened; 
the tramp, tramp, tramp of the rhythmic feet was unvarying, 
incessant, then came a break. The order had been given to halt 
for a rest. The ,boys were evidently sitting down by the edge of the 
road. But though they rested they were by no means still. 

"Oh Mademoiselle!''' they entreated the dark and 'unrespon- 
sive houses, "Oh, Mademoiselle! Deux vin rouge toot sweet s'il 
wus plait, Mademoiselle!" 

They swore genially. They sang snatches of Rail, hail the 
gangs all here and Tipperary. One boy had a mouth organ which 
he played with vim. Someone introduced a barnyard motif and 
they were off, crowing and cackling, mooing and bleating, imitat- 
ing every animal known to domestic life. They sounded like 
schoolboys off for a holiday and my God! they were soldiers on 
the march to the front, their faces set to the battle! 

Tonight as we came home from the hut, we were startled by 
a strange sight. The sky was clear, except for one dark mass 
shaped like a cloud of smoke which hung above the horizon to 
the north. As we looked, suddenly the under side of the cloud 
turned an angry crimson, then in a moment grew dark again. A 
minute later the red glow showed again only to fade out and be 
repeated. We knew that the angry light must be the glare re- 



THE ENGINEERS 155 

fleeted from the flashes of the guns which were belching red death 
across the lines. All at once the battle-field seemed very near. 

Abainville, September 14. 

We have taken the Saint Mihiel salient! The news came in 
yesterday over the wires. At first we couldn't believe it. We 
have heard so many wonderful but alas! too hopeful things over 
those wires! But now the newspapers have proved it, with their 
maps showing the salient cut off as clean as by a knife. And 
if we wanted concrete proof, why we have that too. They 
have sent for a detail of engineers from Abainville to build hurry- 
up prison pens. They simply haven't any place to put the thou- 
sands of captive Germans. The detail set out in high spirits look- 
ing forward to doing a brisk business in souvenirs; already reports 
have come in to the effect that buttons and shoulder-straps may 
be had in exchange for a cigarette, and a ring for a sack of five- 
cent "smoking." 

The inhabitants of Saint Mihiel, they say, were terror-stricken 
at the sight of the Americans. When our troops first entered the 
town they believed the city had been retaken. The Americans, 
they thought, were Austrians. No one in Saint Mihiel had ever 
seen an American; they hadn't even known America was in the 
war! 

But even in Saint Mihiel I don't believe that there was any 
greater joy than the joy that was here in our own kitchen. Mad- 
ame who helps us with the dishes at the hut is the daughter of the 
refugee schoolmaster, a shy, sensitive, appealing little woman, 
girl-like in spite of her half -grown daughter. When we told her 
that the salient had been taken she went white and trembled. 
And what of Vieville? she begged; Vieville, her own little village? 
We got the map and showed it to her. Sure enough, there was 
Vieville and the new fine stretching the other side of it! It was 
true past doubting. Madame shivered. "I don't know whether 
to laugh or to cry," she told us and there were sobs in her voice 
while she smiled at us. She tried to go on with scrubbing the floor, 



156 ABAINVILLE 

but she couldn't. Would we mind if she ran home for a minute? 
She must tell the news to Papa and Maman. But certainly, stay as 
long as you like! we told her. In an hour she was back again, to 
go about her work in a dazed uncertain fashion, smiling tremu- 
lously while the tears stood in her eyes. We must get someone to 
take her place at the canteen, she told us, — they would be going 
back to Vieville right away. It was plain to see that she would 
have liked to start that very moment. We said nothing. Of 
course it was impossible. Vieville though liberated was close to 
the lines. When I looked at Madame so happy, so confidently 
eager to return to her home, I sickened to think of the ruin that 
probably awaited her. How do they have the courage to face it, 
these French people? I thought of the words of the old school- 
master: "We are living under tension now, it is the strain that 
keeps us up. When the war is over there will be a terrible reac- 
tion." They have been brave, so brave, these peasant villagers, 
but how will they bear the future? Where will they be swept when 
they are caught in the fearful ebb of that reaction? 

Already odd-looking little German narrow-gauge engines and 
freight cars have begun to appear in the yards, part of the Saint 
Mihiel booty. It does the eyes good to look at them. 

One doesn't want to hope too greatly, but is it possible that 
this may be the beginning of the end? 

Abainville, September 18. 

Last night they bombed Gondrecourt. We were startled out of 
our sleep by the explosions. Lying in bed I could hear the angry 
growling gr gr gr which distinguishes the German plane, as it 
flew over Abainville headed back towards the lines. Would it 
drop another bomb? It seemed to take an interminable time to 
pass over us. Finally the growling hum grew faint, died away. 
Then the real excitement of the night began. Swarming into the 
streets, men, women and children, they proceeded to turn the 
occasion into a social event. Standing in the square in the moon- 
light, all talking at once and all talking at the top of their voices, 
they discussed, narrated, compared, commented, sympathized, 



THE ENGINEERS 157 

while high above all the din I could hear Madame 's voice in semi- 
hysterical outbursts of emotion. How they could find so much to 
say about it I can't imagine. If Hindenburg's whole army had 
suddenly appeared in Gondrecourt they couldn't have been more 
excited. I went to sleep and left them still busy analyzing, as I 
took it, their psychological reactions. 

This morning we learned that the bombs, falling at the edge 
of the town, had injured nothing except a few trees. 

"What would you do if they should start to bomb Abainville? " 
I asked Madame when she brought me my morning toast and 
chocolate. 

"I? I would go to the church." 

"What you, the infidel! You who never go to mass!'' 

"I know." Madame smiled a little sheepishly. "And yet all 
the same, one would feel safer there." 

At the canteen a lieutenant who was just finishing his course 
at Gondrecourt came in. 

"Nobody can imagine who should have wanted to bomb the 
school," he declared, "unless it was some former pupil." 

"Why I was told that the Gondrecourt School was the ranking 
school of France!" I exclaimed. 

"Made a mistake in the last syllable," he responded sourly, 
"it should have been spelled e-s-t." 

But if the inhabitants of Abainville have experienced no losses 
through air-raids yet, they have nevertheless, suffered a minor 
casualty. Victor, the town simpleton, the genial, harmless Victor, 
was knocked down by a passing automobile yesterday and became 
separated from his left ear in the ensuing confusion. Poor wretch! 
I saw him this morning hobbling down the street with a cane, his 
head swathed in bandages, but the same old cheerful smile on his 
half-wit face, as he cocked one eye warily on the look-out for 
approaching autos. Meanwhile a heated controversy is being 
waged between the medical officers of Abainville as to whether or 
not that ear might after all have been saved. 



1 58 ABAINVILLE 



Saint Malo, Brittany, September 23 
Today I took tea with a Baroness, not only I, but about eighty 
odd members of the A. E. F. here en permission like myself. Our 
hostess was an American lady, the widow of a French Baron; the 
tea a weekly party held at her Chateau out in the country, to which 
all boys on leave in this Brittany area are invited. 

We took the funny little narrow-gauge train from Saint Malo, 
a "mixed" train and so crowded by the tea party that the boys 
must ride in the baggage car and on the flat freight cars, and started 
our journey out to Chateauneuf. The feature of the train trip 
was the blackberries. Here in Brittany these grow all along the 
roadsides, the bushes topping the narrow earth-covered walls like 
dykes that serve for fences. Strangely enough in this land of 
thrift, the blackberries go untouched, untasted. A Frenchman 
who lectured to us last spring declared that as a child he was warned 
not to eat them: they would give him lice, he was told. This, he 
explained, was the method which French parents took to dissuade 
their children from eating berries which, growing along the road- 
sides, would be full of dust — a quaint scruple to find among people 
ordinarily so superior to sanitary considerations! But the Ameri- 
cans had no such superstitions; at every crossroads stop we made, 
the boys swarmed off the cars and fell upon the wayside bushes. 
I tasted some that one of the boys brought back for me. Compared 
to our blackberries at home they were flat and flavorless, but any- 
way they were fruit and they were free and that was all the A. E. F. 
demanded. 

Arrived at Chateauneuf, we must first file through the reception 
room where each and all of us shook hands with the Baroness, a 
gracious, stately old lady dressed in black, and then out upon the 
lawn beyond the long ivy-covered, many-gabled house, to sit upon 
the grass and drink our tea. But tea was a misnomer unless it 
might have been the sort which the English call "high tea," it was 
a supper; salad, sandwiches, buttermilk and fruit punch served on 
real china plates and in dainty goblets. Many a covetous eye I 



THE ENGINEERS 159 

saw fixed on the silver forks with the coronets engraved on them, 
while the whispered word "souvenir" caught my ear, but to the 
boys' credit I am glad to say that, as far as I know, they one and 
all resisted this temptation. 

After supper the boys sang and then we were invited to go 
through the house and wander about the grounds and garden. 
Coming back to the house after having made the rounds, the boy 
who was with me suddenly stopped stock-still. 

"Well I'll be darned!" 

Before us wound a tiny stream and perched on its bank an old, 
old peasant woman was busy scrubbing what was evidently the 
Chateau wash. The boy turned and looked at me despairingly, 
"And for all that's such a fine house," he groaned, "I suppose there 
ain't so much as a speck of plumbing in the whole blamed build- 
ing!" 

On the lawn we found games were in progress. All the young- 
sters from the neighborhood had assembled to watch the Americans 
at the tea party. At first they had hung shyly on the outskirts, 
but now a lad from, the air service had started them to romping. 
Taking hold of hands a long line of these little gamin would pursue 
a soldier victim, encircle him, bring him to earth, then pile on him, 
holding him a helpless prisoner until he bought his liberty with a 
ransom of cigarettes, gum or coppers. It was a wonderful game 
for the children but I could not help but watch with apprehension, 
every time there was a pig-pile, to see where all those wooden 
shoes would land. 

Coming home, we walked to the little fishing village next door 
and took the train there. As this visit to the village is also a weekly 
affair, all the inhabitants were on their door-steps to greet us, the 
women with their red cheeks, dressed invariably in black dresses 
and little stiffly starched net caps. We went into the church with 
its array of votive offerings in the shape of tiny models of fishing 
boats and then, on our way to the station, stopped to view, over 
the hedge, the picture-book garden of one old fisherman in which 
the trees and shrubs were all clipped and trained into the quaintest 



i6o ABAINVILLE 

shapes — peacocks and animals and little ships. As the crowd 
moved on I lingered. An old man leaning on a cane, who had been 
watching from the road-side, stepped forward and spoke to me. 
He was the owner of the garden. He wanted to express to me his 
gratitude to America, America who had saved France! "Ah! 
Vive VAmcriquel" The old fellow's tribute, unsolicited and un- 
premeditated evidently, touched me deeply. 

Abainville, October 4. 

While I was away it seems several things occurred. For one, 
we lost Nanny. Whether some enterprising mess sergeant thought 
the day's menu would be improved by the addition of kid pie, 
whether some French family lured her away to be interned in their 
back yard, or whether, as one might more darkly suspect, the Ad- 
jutant had something to do with the matter; nobody knows. The 
bare fact confronts us: Nanny has disappeared. 

We have also lost one of our most picturesque customers. This 
was a handsome young Greek with a beautiful curled mustache, 
named Niccolo. He used to hold up the chocolate line, while, his 
eyes fairly shooting fire, he rolled up his sleeves and showed me 
the scars of the bayonet wounds which he received fighting the 
Turks. "The German, he just the same the Turk! I tella the 
Captain he letta me go front, killa ten, twenty, hundred Germans!" 
Why such a bloodthirsty soul as his should be cribbed, cabined and 
confined in an engineer regiment, he never explained. Just before 
I went away on leave a detail of prisoners from the guard-house 
arrived at the hut one morning to scrub the floor. To my regret 
I noticed Noccolo was among them. Niccolo, however, did not 
seem to mind, he was quite happily occupied with telling the others 
how the work should be done. 

"That feller's nuts," complained a fellow-prisoner to me, "he 
spends all his time when he's in the brig, tryin' to read the Bible 
to us." 

While I was away they sent him to the Gondrecourt hospital 
on suspicion of insanity. The other night he escaped and made his 



THE ENGINEERS 161 

way back to Abainville clad in his hospital pajamas, only to be 
caught and taken back again. Poor Niccolo with his beautiful 
mustache and his fiery spirit! I am sorry he never had the chance 
to get those Germans. 

Worst of all, the Y. is in disgrace with the officers. It came about 
through the matter of seats at the movies. The officers wanted 
to come to the shows and they also wanted seats reserved for them; 
naturally they wanted the best seats. Now this is always a vexed 
and delicate problem ir a hut, for if the officers ask for reserved 
seats one can't very well refuse them, and yet to grant them is to 
raise resentment among the men. When I left the matter was hang- 
ing at loose ends. Shortly afterwards our Secretary, who is more 
distinguished for sentimentality than tact, had an inspiration; he 
would put it up to the men. Undoubtedly when the case was laid 
before them, their nobler natures would be touched and they would 
discern that it was their patrotic duty to voluntarily relinquish 
the best seats in the house to their military superiors. So one night 
just as the show was due to start the Secretary walked out onto 
the stage and made his little speech, ending with the appeal: 

"And now boys, where shall we put the officers?" 

A perfect roar answered him. "Put 'em on the roof! Put 'em 
on the roof!" 

It was frightfully embarrassing. The officers were furious. They 
withdrew and called a mass-meeting to consider the matter. What 
the exact statute that covered the case was I don't know. I sup- 
pose the crime was one of a sort of military Use Majeste. Anyway 
the Secretary had indisputably laid himself liable to a court-martial. 
In the end, however, the officers decided that as long as the case was 
one of stupidity rather than malice, they would let the Secretary 
go with a warning. 

And now they have stationed spotters among us! The hut, it 
seems, has proved to possess an all too potent charm for boys who 
should by rights be engaged at "pick and shovel" and other uninvit- 
ing but necessary occupations. In view of this the authorities have 
taken drastic action; passes must now be issued to the boys to 



162 ABAINVILLE 

allow them to enter the hut during work hours, and alas for the 
unhappy lad who ventures in without a permit, the lynx-like eye 
of the amateur detective detail is sure to light upon him! 

Abainville, October ii. 

Nanny has returned! She was found tethered in a backyard 
in a nearby village. Since the French household which claimed 
her as their lawful property refused to relinquish her peacefully, 
she was taken by storm. There was a scrimmage, the neighbors 
rallied to their friends' assistance. But the two lads who had been 
the discoverers managed to break away bearing the struggling 
Nanny with them and, followed by the whole village shouting 
"Stop thief!" gained their truck and rolled triumphantly away. 
No longer, however, does Nanny wander at large, innocently 
trimming the villagers' cabbage rows, or slipping slyly into the 
Adjutant's office to sample his latest orders. Nanny is under 
guard. The engineers are taking no chances. 

Yesterday we acquired a kitten, — a 'wild-eyed yellow scrap 
brought in last night by a lad as an offering. The boys immed- 
iately christened her "The O. D. Cat." Every time I give her a 
caress some one of the boys leaning over the counter is sure to 
remark: "Gee, wish I was a cat!" 

"But what shall I feed her?" I questioned, thinking of the 
difficulty of fresh milk. 

"Corn willy and cognac! What else would you give an O. D. 
cat?" they chorused. 

"And where shall she spend the night?" 

"I'll keep her for you ma'am," volunteered a brawny Texan. 
"She'll sleep right in the bunk longside o' me." 

This morning the canteen was full of tales of the night. "Yes 
sir! he tied her up to a post with a rope as big around as your 
arm! An' the pore cat nearly hanged herself. She hollered all 
night long!" 

This the Texan emphatically denied; he had a tale all of his own 
to tell however. 



THE ENGINEERS 163 

"There was a mouse last night in the barracks. It was the 
littlest mouse you ever seen, but it chased that cat all around 
them barracks. Yes ma'am, it sure did run that cat ragged!" 

"Did you give her any breakfast?" I asked, disdaining any 
comment on his story. 

" Sure ma'am! I gave her a saucerful of cognac." 

"You never did!" 

"Yes, an' it did that cat good, it did. Soon's she'd lapped 
up that saucer; ' Bring on your mouse!' she says." He shook his 
head reflectively. "My, but that cat sure was feelin' its strength 
this mornin'!" 

"Waste cognac on a cat! That's a likely story for that guy to 
be telling!" was the single comment of the bystanders. 

Right here I wish to record a formal apology to the Secretary 
at X who sold me the six-franc eggs a month ago. Today I was 
talking to the Top Sergeant whom I encountered on my way home 
and who carried my basket for me. From something he let fall 
I now more than suspect it was he who accounted for that twenty- 
fourth egg! 

Abainville, October 16. 

His real name, of course, is Horace but since Madame refers to 
him as 'Greece, as 'Oreece he must go, — 'Greece is our new detail. 
He is cautious, conscientious and slow. If 'Oreece ever showed 
signs of having spunk enough to do something that was really bad, 
I would feel that there was hope for him. Madame, who adores 
the Infant, is very cold to 'Oreece. The other day she requested 
him to save her all the cigar stubs he found while sweeping. She 
wanted them for an old derelict of a Frenchman who is a sort of 
scavenger around camp. Poor old papa could smoke the butts 
nicely in his pipe she declared. But 'Oreece was so disobliging as 
to turn his nose up at her proposal. Anyway 'Oreece cuts the 
bread for the jam-sandwiches very, very nicely. 

Three nights ago we had an air-raid alarm. The evening's 
programme was over but the hut was still full of boys. Suddenly 
without any warning, all the lights went out. We looked out the 



i6 4 ABAINVILLE 

door, the camp was in total darkness. In the machine-gun pit 
nearby we could hear quick excited orders interspersed with curses, 
— the gunners were getting ready to stand off the aeroplanes. 
The boys left the hut. We waited for a while and then, getting 
tired of the dark, went home. The planes didn't show up; I went 
to bed feeling that it had been a case of Hamlet without Hamlet. 

Last night we were in the middle of a movie show when a shat- 
tering explosion sounded outside. Back in the kitchen where I 
was serving hot chocolate to the Tea Room line, everyone started 
and stared. Was it a raid? Surely that was a bomb ! There was 
another explosion. Then the lights went out. So it was the real 
thing! I seized the cash-box and stood pat. Another crash; 
instantly outside there was a stampede. In the dark it was im- 
possible to see just what was happening, but from the sounds 
it appeared that about seven hundred pairs of hob-nailed shoes 
were doing double-quick time out the doors. In less time than 
one could believe the auditorium was empty. I heard Madame 's 
voice behind me in staccato exclamations. Somebody scratched a 
match and lit a candle, a little group of boys were still standing at 
the window waiting for their chocolate, their faces looked a bit 
white I thought. Then the Infant put his head out the kitchen 
door: 

"Why, the lights in camp are all on!" he exclaimed. 

A boy came up to the window. "They're practising at the 
school," he told us. "I heard the other day that they were going 
to pull some stunts in the trenches tonight." 

"So that was it!" 

The lights flashed on. 

"But why did they go out?" I asked confused. Nobody could 
explain it. 

At that moment 'Oreece drifted into the kitchen, he wore a 
very pale and apologetic grin. 

"'Oreece!" I gasped, "Did you— " 

"I turned the lights off," he admitted. "I knew where the 
switch was. I thought it was a raid." 



THE ENGINEERS 165 

I glared disgusted: "And a nice night's work you've done!" 

My friend the Texan strolled up to the deserted counter. 

"I met 'em all coming down the road," he remarked. " Gee, but 
it was like the retreat of a whole division!" 

Today the boys have been asking to tease me: " Where were 
you in the Great Air-Raid?" 

"I? Oh, I was under the kitchen- table," I reply. 

Abainville, October 23. 

The Chief has just brought me great news. I am to have a hut 
all of my own. I am to be head cook, bottle-washer, and grand 
high secretary all in one. And I am to go out into the wilds of 
France and start a new hut alone. 

It seems there is an ordnance depot at a village called Mauvages 
about six miles north of here. The camp itself is small, some two 
hundred men, but the town has a large billeting capacity and 
additional bodies of troops will be stationed there from time to 
time. The C. O. of the Ammunition Reclamation Camp, — that 
is its official title, — has requested that a hut be established there. 
With the personnel in its present state no man secretary, says the 
Chief, can be spared, but if I care to undertake the job on my own 
I am welcome to it. And if after two months or so of solitary 
confinement "out in the sticks," as the boys say, I get to hanker- 
ing too badly for the flesh-pots of civilization, why they will arrange 
to have me relieved. Need I say that I snapped up the offer on the 
spot? I had asked to be transfered from Abainville some while ago, 
as the conditions here have been none too congenial, but to have 
a hut all of my own is beyond any luck that I had dared dream. 

I would like to sling my old kit bag over my shoulder, tuck a 
chocolate container under one arm and a case of cigarettes under 
the other, and catch the first truck that passes bound northward 
for Mauvages. But it seems they won't let me go until a New Lady 
comes here to take my place. They have telegraphed to the office 
at Nancy. If the New Lady doesn't come quick, I have a good 
mind to go A. W. O. L. and start my canteen willy-nilly. 



166 ABAINVILLE 

Meanwhile I am planning plans. Because of the grey chill days 
of winter I am going to paint my hut inside the brightest sunshiny 
yellow I can find, hang it with orange curtains, and then in honor 
of the ordnance, christen it the Pumpkin Shell! 



CHAPTER VI 

MAUVAGES 

THE ORDNANCE 

Abainville, October 26. 

I have been to Mauvages; a reconnoitering expedition. As re- 
gards the town the most striking feature about it is the Egyptian 
Fountain. A somewhat startling structure to come upon in a little 
French mud-pie village, it stands in the centre of the town and 
consists of the facade of a temple in front of which towers an an- 
cient God of the Nile — or so I take him — in dull green bronze, 
pouring from pitchers held in either hand clear streams of water 
into a broad semi-circular basin. Behind the columns is another 
pool, this one for the village washerwomen: a cleverly conceived 
arrangement, for every passing stranger must stop to stare at the 
fountain and this in turn affords the washerwomen the opportunity 
to stare at him. 

Around two sides of the town curves the canal along whose 
placid surface the slow barges occasionally pass. They tell me 
that some very beautiful women go by on these canal boats, but 
I suspect that the reason that they seem so beautiful is just that 
they do go by — the lure of the unobtainable. At the south end 
of the town the canal disappears into a hill-side, four miles to the 
southwest it appears again; a rather remarkable, and in view of 
the fact that in the most piping times of peace the traffic on the 
canal never exceeded four barges each way a day, inexplicably ex- 
travagant feat of engineering. Every now and then a little crowd 
of ordnance boys will take a notion to walk through the tunnel 
which has a path cut at one side, an excursion which must be un- 
speakably dreary as the whole length is quite unlighted and the air 
damp and close beyond anything. More than once on these excur- 
sions a boy has fallen into the canal and had to be fished out again. 



i88 MAUVAGES 

4 

preached by a black-face comedian. As luck would have it, two 
real darkies from a labor camp up the line slipped in at the back 
of the hut just as the preacher began. They took it all in deadly 
earnest, and warmed, I suspect, by a glass at the corner cafe, they 
presently began to respond to the preacher's exhortations with 
genuine religious fervor. 

"Dat'sso! You tell 'embruder! Hallelujah! Bless de Lord!" 

The audience up front, hearing a commotion and unluckily not 
catching the comedy, hissed indignantly and the darkies, abashed, 
slunk out. 

Of course at the last moment some of our headliners failed to 
come across. The mumps claimed our dramatic reader and our 
buck-and-wing dancer sent word, just as the curtain was going up, 
that in all the camp, no shoes outside of hob-nails, large enough 
for him could be found. But we made up for these defections by 
our impromptu acts. The most surprising of these was the Little 
Fat Poilu. He popped up suddenly from Heaven knows where, a 
round rosy dumpling of a man with a shiny nose and a fat black 
beard, and offered his services. On his first appearance he played 
the violin with vim and spirit. Then in answer to the applause he 
dropped his violin, seized the tall hat from the head of the darky 
preacher, clapped it on his own, and bounced back onto the stage. 
The transformation was amazing. In an instant, instead of a 
poilu he had become a jolly little bourgeois shopkeeper out for 
a stroll on the boulevard. He proceeded to sing a comic song, a 
song with an interminable number of verses, unquestionably very 
funny and in all probability quite scandalous. The French portion 
of the audience was charmed, they joined vociferously in the jiggy 
choruses, and when he had done they insisted on another and an- 
other. For a while it looked as if France was going to run away 
with the programme, but finally the little poilu came to the end 
of his repertoire, — or of his breath maybe, and America once more 
took the stage. 

Today we are living in an atmosphere of theatrical enterprise. 
Already there are three or four "bigger and better" rival shows in 



THE ORDNANCE 189 

process of incubation. What's more, Barney is writing a play. He 
sits at one of the canteen tables surrounded by a group of admiring 
would-be actors and each sheet, as he finishes it, is gravely handed 
around the crowd. So far it seems to contain just three characters; 
Rose the beautiful stenographer, the villain landlord and the office 
boy. I am waiting in suspense to see whether Barney's master- 
piece is going to turn out a melodrama, a problem play or a 
dramatic treatise on the social and political wrongs of Ireland. 

The French troops are moving tomorrow. Tonight the Little 
Fat Poilu came to bid us good-bye. When no one was looking I 
filled his pockets up with cigarettes. 

Mauvages, December 9. 

A very regrettable incident occured last night. The day being 
Sunday we were due for a religious service at seven-fifteen. At 
seven-ten the Reverend Gentleman, who was to instruct my flock 
in the way wherein they should go, arrived in company with the 
Business Manager from Gondrecourt. Now it happened that the 
Reverend Gentleman on this occasion was none other than my 
friend the Sentimental Secretary. He surveyed the congregation; 
there were nine boys in the hut. He sat down and waited for the 
audience to arrive. But the audience didn't. Instead one wretch 
surreptitiously sneaked out the door. At last I felt it necessary 
to come forward with apologies and explanations; my flock at 
present was small to start with, the sheep had all gone to Domremy 
on an excursion, the goats were deep in an after-pay-day poker game. 

"Do you wish me to hold the meeting?" the R. G. questioned 
grimly. 

"If you will." 

The Reverend Gentleman, a bit tight about the lips, laid on. 
It was a cold night; we gathered by the fire. I tried to make myself 
look as large as possible, but stretch the congregation as you might, 
we only reached two-thirds of the way around the stove. 

"Well," said the Business Manager when it was all over with, 
"how soon will you be ready to close out this hut?" 



170 MAUVAGES 

camouflage curtains are let down. In each space between the win- 
dows we have tacked one of that gorgeous series of French railway- 
posters, so my hut is brave with color, tawny orange, sharp blues, 
and shadowy purples. 

Meanwhile the whole French populace has called, singly or in 
crowds, in order to see just what is going on. As for the children, 
I am sure they must have declared a school holiday in honor of us. 
The whole concern is evidently a bit puzzling to the French mind; 
but they have solved the riddle by terming the hut a " cooperatif," 
and so I let it rest. 

But you will be wondering how le diable is contriving to live 
with le bon Dieu. 

Monsieur le Cure* is quite old. There is something stern and 
something tragic in his face, with all his urbane graciousness. He 
is a refugee from the devastated area and like myself a lodger in 
the house, whose owners have fled this zone of armies. Monsieur 
le Cure* was a captive for six months with the Germans and the 
desolate confinement wrought a little on his mind; "At times he 
is absent,' , says Madame the Care-taker. This morning I stopped 
and chatted with him at his door downstairs, he called me in to 
show me "a souvenir of his captivity," a little dirty-white tin 
basin out of which as prisoner he ate. "I learned to smoke then,'*" 
he told me. "There was nothing to do the whole day long but sit 
and smoke and wait for the clock to strike." Tonight I am going 
to take him a little gift of American tobacco. 

I am planning a house-warming with which to formally open 
the hut. 

Mauvages, November 6. 
We didn't have that house-warming. Even as we were finishing 
the hut all hands came down with the flu. Curiously enough it hit 
the camp all in a heap after dinner. Thirty per cent of the boys, 
the two officers, the building detail and myself were all laid low 
between one and six o'clock. Fortunately it was the lightest sort 
of an epidemic, a mere soupqon as it were, in every case. I merely 



THE ORDNANCE 171 

retired to my bed for a day and a half and refused to eat. On 
the third day, which was yesterday, I crawled back to the canteen. 
It was a case of pipe all hands on deck and stand to the counter. 
Two companies of engineers had arrived in the night. They were 
back from an advanced station just behind the lines and they were 
starved for chocolate and cigarettes. Two months ago they left 
Abainville, green troops, just over, now they are seasoned veterans, 
in proof of which they carry souvenirs salvaged from German dug- 
outs. I heard all about these souvenirs, as I was taking break- 
fast, from the lips of an excited Neighbor Woman. From the list 
of unwarlike trophies which she rattled off I gleaned umbrellas 
and a wall-clock; but the best was reserved for me when I reached 
the canteen. One of the boys had met one of these same engineers 
toiling up the hill from the railroad with a large upholstered arm- 
chair on his back. 

"You can't imagine," he complacently replied to his gaping 
questioners, "how nice it is, at the end of a hard day's work, to 
be able to sit down and smoke one's pipe in real comfort." 

Up and down the street are heaps of pale-green cabbages. 
The field kitchens by the fountain are busy cooking them. The 
town is fairly steeped in the odor of boiling cabbages. These are 
the famous German cabbages captured in the Saint Mihiel drive, 
and for the past two months, the engineers, they tell me, have had 
them boiled for dinner, for supper and for breakfast, until it seems 
that they hate the Germans for those cabbages as much as they 
hate them for the rape of Belgium and the sinking of the Lusi- 
tania. 

At the corner by the fountain this noon a lady stopped to 
speak to me. She was tall and white-haired and bore herself with 
gracious dignity. She had heard, she told me, that these men had 
just returned from Hattonchatel. She was very anxious to learn 
something of the fate of a nearby town, Haumont by the lakes, 
where her aged sister had lived. Since the German invasion four 
years ago she had heard absolutely no word of her. Was the town 
in such a state that it was possible her sister might still be there, or 



1 72 MAUVAGES 

had the inhabitants been herded off to Germany? I questioned 
several boys, finally I found a lad who spoke French. Yes he 
knew the town to which she referred. He had often observed it 
from the height of a nearby hill, — it had been daily under shell- 
fire. Very sadly, but with her gracious sweetness undisturbed, 
the lady turned away. 

Mauvages, November 9. 

Life is just one breathless bustle now-a-days. Hardly had 
we got our minds adjusted to the engineers when a whole bat- 
talion of machine-gunners marched into town. From the moment 
they arrived it has been one interminable line from morning 
until night, demanding the Three C.s, — chocolate, cookies, and 
cigarettes. Luckily my closet was well stocked and so has stood 
the strain. 

And speaking of closets, I have acquired a skeleton in mine. 
It came about through a sick soldier, an accomodating captain 
and an egg-nogg. The sick boy I discovered in Madame the Care- 
taker's stable while breakfasting this morning. He was very 
miserable, Madame told me, and had been quite unable to eat a 
thing for days. I stopped in at the stable and verified her words. 
The boy looked wretched. 

1 ' Come to the canteen at ten o'clock and I'll have something 
for you to eat," I told him. Then I begged a cup of fresh milk 
from Madame. 

The Captain I discovered in front of my canteen counter, and 
knowing him to be a southerner and a gentleman, I summoned my 
courage and whispered a petition for a few drops of something, 
from the flask he carried in his pocket, to put in the egg-nogg for 
the sick boy. The Captain, who was corpulent and dignified, in 
some embarrassment replied that he was unfortunately without 
anything at present, but that the lack would be immediately 
supplied. He disappeared, returning to produce before my startled 
eyes, from beneath his coat, a life-sized bottle labeled cognac. 
Then he invited himself into the kitchen to help make the egg- 



THE ORDNANCE 173 

nogg. He proved expert. I quaked fearing the customers would 
sniff the cognac through the lattice-work. The sick boy came, 
turned out to be one of the Captain's own men. The Captain 
cocked an unsympathetic eye. 

"What's the matter with you, Smith?" he questioned, "been 
drunk again?" 

"Captain," I scolded horrified, "I won't have any rough talk 
like that in my kitchen!" 

Smith indignantly denied the charge. He drank his egg-nogg 
and left looking three shades happier. 

"Captain," said I, "did you ever make an egg-nogg for one of 
your men before?" 

"Never," replied the Captain with decision. He drained his 
own bowl and took his departure. "I will leave the bottle be- 
hind," he told me. 

"But I don't want it!" 

"You might need it again," he declared. And nothing could 
induce him to change his mind. 

That bottle weighs on my conscience like a crime. I have hid- 
den the guilty thing in a corner of the store-room shelf behind 
some perfectly innocent-looking bundles of stationery and a pile 
of safety razor blades. But out of sight it continues to haunt my 
mind. I feel as if I were giving sanctuary to the devil. And, worst 
of all, I have a vision of coming into the hut some day to find 
that the bottle has been discovered and the whole Y. M. C. A. is 
on a jag. 

Mauvages, November ii. 

It isn't true. It isn't real. It can't be that the war is really 
ended. 

This morning I awoke to the sound of the most tremendous 
barrage I have ever heard. At this distance however it was al- 
most more like a sensation than a sound, a sort of incessant thrill- 
ing, throbbing vibration. 

The question was on everybody's lips: "Do you suppose they 
really will sign the armistice?" "It don't sound much like peace 



i 74 MAUVAGES 

this morning!" would come the dubious reply. We have heard 
rumours just since yesterday, but in rumours we have so long 
ceased to put any faith! As the morning wore on our skepticism 
grew. The almost unbroken reverberation frayed the nerves. 
As eleven o'clock drew near the tension became torture. Would 
the guns cease? Could they? It seemed as if they must go on 
forever. The clock in the old grey church tower began to strike the 
hour. I flung open the kitchen door. We all stood breathless, 
frozen, listening. Ding-dong, ding-dong; through the notes of the 
bell we could still hear the throbbing of the great guns. Eleven 
times the slow bell chimed, there was a heavy boom, one more, 
and then absolute silence. We stared at each other blankly 
incredulous. "They've signed," said a boy. 

I walked down the little lane that leads to the ammunition 
dump and picked a bunch of orange-scarlet berries. I wanted to 
be alone, to listen. It was a day all pearl and lavender, a violet 
mist hung over the brown hill-sides. No one passed on the road, 
there was not a sound of any sort that reached me, the world 
seemed to be asleep. The stillness was terrifying. I waited, tense, 
not able to believe, expecting every moment to have the silence 
broken by the resumption of the cannonade. Then as the minutes 
passed and still my strained ears could not catch so much as a 
whisper, I turned back and entered the little roadside Chapel in 
the Bush. There in its dim blue and silver solitude I knelt down 
before the little statue of Jeanne d'Arc and prayed. 

At noon someone started the old church bell to ringing, it 
jangled frantically for hours. 

I think we are all a little dazed. I for one have a curious feeling 
as if I had come up suddenly against a blank wall. 

Mauvages, November 12. 

Last night we celebrated. The whole ordnance camp got out 

and set off flares and signal rockets from the dump, while two of 

the boys put over a barrage with the machine-gun on the hill. 

And there was much champagne. This morning the street is hung 



THE ORDNANCE 175 

with flags, — I never knew before how thrilling the tricolor could 
be until I saw it like this, against the stone-grey of the old houses. 

A company of French cavalry is just passing through town. 
They are very beautiful to look at, with their bright blue uniforms, 
their bright bay horses, and the long slim lances which they carry 
in one hand, each with a tiny pennant at the end. As each one 
comes into view down the street I think; "Thank God, for one 
more Frenchman left alive." 

The boys have already begun to argue about the date on which 
they will reach home. But though the fighting may be over, there 
are long months still ahead of us here I am sure. And now with 
the strain and the excitement gone, France is bound to look greyer 
and muddier and more whats-the-use to the boys than ever before. 
May Heaven help us all! 

Mauvages, November 17. 

I want to make you acquainted with Bill and Nick, my two 
invaluable assistants. Bill is my official detail formally assigned. 
Nick is a volunteer, his services a free-will offering proferred at 
such times as he is not required in his regular capacity as guardian 
of the bath-house. 

Bill is a lame tame giant six feet two and up. He slipped a cog 
in his knee one time while shuffling shells last summer and never 
got quite straightened out again. Bill is my salvation. He redeems 
what would otherwise be a desperate situation. For Bill has a 
Business Brain. If it weren't for that, I believe I should be driven 
to the mad-house trying to balance the francs and centimes at the 
end of each week. Besides having a head for figures, Bill is an all 
round handy man with a turn for inventions. When I come back 
to the hut after a morning expedition to Gondrecourt in quest of 
suppplies, I may or I may not find last night's dishes washed but 
I am pretty sure to find some wonderful new contrivance added to 
my hut equipment. 7 Bill has made me a stove-pipe out of a German 
powder can. v Bill has installed an automatic closing attachment 
for the main door, which consists of a rope, a pulley, a stove grate 



176 MAUVAGES 

and an excruciating squeak; the chief advantage of this invention 
being the squeak which always betrays the sneak who tries to 
escape undetected in the middle of a prayer. Sometimes I think 
it hurts Bill's pride to have to take orders from a lady, especially 
one with such an unmathematical brain as I. Occasionally he lapses 
into a you're-only-a-little-girl-after-all sort of attitude and then I 
have to put on all my dignity and read the riot act to him. But 
when I hand in my weekly cash sheets at Headquarters and the 
cashier there tells me that my accounts are the best in the whole 
area, why Bill could have the whole hut and everything in it. 

As for Nick, if Bill is right hand man, why Nick makes a quite 
indispensable left, and this in spite of the fact that the poor fellow 
is almost blind. He got a crack in the back of his head from the 
corner of a case of * 75s," while unloading ammunition some two 
months ago, which affected the optic nerve. And though the doc- 
tor promises a partial restoration of his sight, at present he must 
grope about in dark glasses and semi-darkness. Nick has a history. 
An orphan, educated for the priesthood, he ran away at the age 
of sixteen and started on the career of a cowboy. After having 
broken every bone in his body in the course of his broncho-busting 
he rose to the heights of his profession and joined Buffalo Bill's 
Wild West Show. Here he met his wife, a lasso and pistol expert. 
While riding an "outlaw" in Madison Square Garden, he was 
thrown and had one of his legs badly smashed, which forced him 
to retire from public life. After this he spent a couple of years as a 
bar-tender in New York. In his spare moments, aided by his 
ecclesiastical Latin, he learned practical chemistry from an old 
German druggist who kept shop next door. Now in his civilian 
capacity Nick is consulting chemist for a Brooklyn laundry con- 
cern, while his wife conducts successfully a French millinery store 
in Flatbush. So much for romance! 

Nick is, I am quite sure, the politest Irishman in France. More- 
over he is the darling of the feminine portion of the town. Partly 
by reason of his blindness, which appeals to the quick sympathies 
of the Frenchwomen, and partly because of his unvarying courtesy, 



THE ORDNANCE 177 

his kindliness and his quaint humour, he is the most sought-after 
man in Mauvages. He knows, I should judge, some six words of 
French, but with these he manages to "get by." And he is forever 
being invited out to supper. 

Every morning between sweeping up and washing the dishes 
and waiting on the counter we hold a coffee party in the kitchen; 
Bill and Nick and myself and whoever else happens to be around. 
The party consists of coffee with plenty of sugar and canned milk, — ■ 
always a treat in the army as in the messes you must drink it plain; — « 
and K. P. cookies. Now K. P. cookies, you must understand, are 
cookies from the end of the package that the mouse didn 't eat. As ' 
there is considerable activity on the part of the mice these days 
there are any number of K. P. cookies. And yet I have done 
my best. Pricked on by conscience I said to Nick day before yester- 
day, "Nick do you suppose you could get me a trap?" 

"Certainly Ma'am, I'll buy one at the store." 

"But wait a minute, do you know the word for mouse-trap?" 

"Don't worry. That's not in the least necessary." And he set 
out for the General Store Articles Militaire down the street. 

But for once his sign language failed him. He was offered every- 
thing in the store from a screw-driver to an egg-beater and only 
achieved the trap finally by stumbling over one on the floor. It 
was a French trap to be baited with flour and sewed up with thread; 
I looked at it skeptically, but. the next morning we had caught a 
mouse. However today it was K. P. cookies as usual. 

"Bill," I said, "you'll have to borrow Iodine." Iodine is the 
Medical Sergeant's cat. 

"Aw shucks," says Bill, "Iodine is a frog cat. She wouldn't 
look at a mouse unless you served it to her on a platter dressed with 
garlic." 

Bill says no home is complete without a dog. I quite agree with 
him. Only, I say, we must catch him young so we can bring him 
up in the way he should go. These French dogs for the most part 
seem to have neither manners nor morals. So Bill is keeping an 
eye out for a likely puppy. 



178 MAUVAGES 

"But," he said, "when we close up here, the only way we'll be 
able to settle it between us will be to make him into sausages." 

If we ever do get a dog I think I shall call him "Tin Hat" just 
because every other dog in the A. E. F. is named "Cognac." 

Mauvages, November 20. 

Our relations to the French populace are enough to try a dip- 
lomat. Hardly a day passes in the hut but what some delicate 
social or ethical problem arises. 

First, there is Louis, a most disreputable old scamp if there 
ever was one. He keeps the cafe across the street and so is my 
deadly rival. The other day the old rascal appeared at my counter 
grinning from ear to ear, and demanded "bonbons pour le rheum," 
producing, in witness of his urgent need, a feeble and patently 
artificial cough. When I answered that unfortunately we had 
none, he instantly substituted chocolate in his request. Unable to 
resist the rapscallion's grin I gave him a handful, whereat in beam- 
ing gratitude he immediately invited me over to the cafe to have 
a glass of wine at his expense. And when I hastily informed 
him that I didn't care for wine he genially amended the invitation 
so that it stood, "glass of beer." And now I am told by the boys 
that he has announced that I, forsooth, am his "fiancee!" 

But chiefly there is Rebecca. We call her Rebecca because 
when Bill goes to the well to get a pail of water he usually happens 
to meet her there. Rebecca is thin and dark and lively. Her 
English vocabulary includes such phrases as "beeg steef" and 
"Mek eet snappee!" She is, as the boys put it, "full of pep." 
Rebecca has a little black and villainous-looking husband who 
occasionally appears in town from the trenches, but for the most 
part she is free to follow where her fancy leads. If it should 
ever lead her to confession I am afraid she would make the old 
Cure's eyebrows curl. 

Bill's acquaintance with Rebecca is entirely on business lines 
he wants me to understand. She does his laundry for him. "It's 
all very well," I say, " to take her your washing, but why must you 



THE ORDNANCE 179 

take her chocolates?" He knows I disapprove. When he lingers 
too long on the water detail I eye him severely on his return. 

"Bill, have you been hobnobbing with Rebecca?" 

Bill grins admission. 

Rebecca lives in a white little one story door-and-window 
house just around the corner on the Rue d'Eglise which I must pass 
going to my canteen. And Rebecca keeps tab on the precise hour 
and minute at which I return to my billet under Bill's escort every 
night. Going home one stormy night I took Bill's arm. The 
next day Bill informed me that Rebecca had advised him that such 
conduct, according to French notions, was not quite comme il faut. 

Bill, I find, is able to make an astonishing amount of conver- 
sation with his "nigger French" that takes absolutely no account 
of moods, tenses, conjugations, declinations or any of the other 
stuff in grammar books. And I am afraid he understands a great 
deal that it would be just as well he didn't. 

"How did you learn it all?" I asked him. 

He looked at me side-wise. "Rebecca gave me lessons," he 
answered grinning. 

Last night, as we passed Rebecca's house, I noticed that her 
door was the least bit ajar. 

As Bill left me at my gate I admonished him; "Now don't you 
stop to say good-night to Rebecca." 

"Gosh, no!" said Bill, "if I did I'm afraid I might have to 
hurry or I'd be late for breakfast." 

Whenever I meet Rebecca on the street she always bows to 
me most urbanely. 

Nor is Rebecca all my concern in relation to Big Bill. There 
is also the pretty girl who lives down the street who undoubt- 
edly would not be averse to accompanying him to America. Bill 
stops at her house every night in order to get a quart of fresh milk 
for the C. O.'s breakfast. I bid him be wary of these Franco- 
American alliances, citing horrible examples I have known, such 
as the machine-gunner, for instance, who, in order to be in harmony 
with his future family-in-law, felt it incumbent on him to appear 



180 MAUVAGES 

at his wedding wearing a pair of wooden shoes; and of the dough- 
boy who married a widow with two children, and, since he knew no 
French and she no English, persuaded his company commander to 
detail an interpreter to live in the house with them for the first 
three days after their marriage. 

Not many days ago a girl came to my kitchen door in company 
with a soldier. She had a United States paymaster's cheque which 
she wished to have cashed. Afterwards I questioned Bill. It 
seems a lieutenant had married and afterwards divorced her. She 
was still drawing his allotment. She looked so thoroughly the 
peasant, bare-headed, in a shawl and shoddy skirt, with nothing 
to particularly distinguish her pretty but inexpressive face, that 
I voiced my wonder to the boys. 

"Oh but you ought to see her when she gets dressed up!" they 
said. 

"Fine feathers don't make fine birds," I remind severely. "Bill, 
be warned!" 

"Yes, but there's Gaby," Bill suggests. "What about her?" 
Now Gaby is the little chauffeuse who has been driver for a 
French general three years and who turns up periodically in town. 
She is quaint as a wood-cut and solemn as an owl, with her shock 
of bobbed hair and her great staring child-like eyes. She sits 
at the mess table and never says a word but draws your glance 
irresistibly. Always she wears an odd little straight-cut dress 
hanging just below her knees and a croix de guerre pinned to her 
breast. Gaby killed a man with her car not long since and was 
held a prisoner at Ligny-en-Barrois for ten days in consequence. 
Gaby and one of the sergeants at the A. R. are undergoing all 
the woe and wonder of love's young dream. 

"Oh well," I say, "Gaby is different." 

This afternoon Rebecca appeared at the canteen and asked 
for Bill. She was so elegantly attired that at first I didn't know 
her. After a parley at the door, Bill, with an odd expression 
on his face, takes his second-best raincoat from the peg and hands 
it to her. I looked my inquiries. An old doughboy sweetheart of 



THE ORDNANCE 181 

the lady's, it appears, had returned on leave and they were going 
travelling together. 

" Going off on a honey-moon with another feller, in my rain- 
coat! Gosh, it's a cruel war!" grinned Bill. 

Mauvages, November 24. 
Now that the time is drawing on toward Christmas the boys, — 
bless them! — are all wanting to send some remembrance to mothers, 
sisters, wives and sweethearts at home. But what to send has been 
the desperate question. One sort of goods and one only is offered 
for such purposes by the French stores in this locality, a line of 
flimsy silk stuff, handkerchiefs, scarfs and little aprons, machine- 
embroidered with gay flowers and each bearing the legend "Sou- 
venir de France." They are fragile slazy things, absurdly high- 
priced, inappropriate and often hideous. But to the boys they are 
altogether beautiful. After many requests and inquiries I gave in. 
I went to Gondrecourt and purchased what I could find that was 
the least tawdry, the least exorbitant. I brought them to the can- 
teen; they proved so popular that three days afterward I had to 
make another trip to town to buy some more. Now we carry a 
regular stock of fancy silk handkerchiefs and aprons in addition 
to the chewing tobacco and cigarettes. But here one is faced with 
a delicate problem. Each handkerchief is embroidered with some 
such specific legend as To my Sweetheart, To My Dear Wife, To 
my Darling Daughter, — I refused to consider the bit of lacy frippery 
marked To my Dear Son! — and this complicates matters immensely 
I find. Somehow we always manage to have a supply of Sweet- 
hearts on hand when a man is in quest of a Dear Wife and vice 
versa. In vain I artfully suggest that it would be a pretty compli- 
ment to call one's wife "Dear Sweetheart," to their minds there 
seems to be something essentially compromising in such a notion. 
Occasionally the reverse will work however, and a boy, grinning 
and abashed, will select a handkerchief marked "Dear Wife" to 
send to his sweetheart. Sometimes during these sales one's faith 
in the single heartedness of Young America receives a shock, as 



i82 MAUVAGES 

when an innocent-looking lad will blandly select half a dozen "Dear 
Sweethearts" and put each in a separate envelope to send to a dif- 
ferent girl! 

Speaking of souvenirs, there is a boy who acts as fireman on the 
dinky little engine that pulls the work-train on the narrow-gauge 
between Mauvages and Sauvoy. He belongs to a regiment of 
engineers who served with the British in Flanders for some eight 
months. While there he dug up enough dead Germans, — "You 
could always tell where they were buried because the grass grew so 
much greener there," he explained, — and picked enough gold fillings 
out of their teeth, to make a whole match box full. He was going 
to take it home and have a dentist put the gold in his teeth "for 
a souvenir," but unluckily in the spring drive he lost all his possess- 
ions and the match box with them. Now this, as Kipling would 
say, is a true story. 

Mauvages, November 30. 

Let me recount to you the gentle tale of the German prisoners 
and the Thanksgiving movies, an incident which I consider a sort 
of sermon in a nutshell and a Warning to the Nations. 

Unluckily there is in this division a secretary who is a senti- 
mentalist. He has an idea that an important part of his object 
in France is "to enliven the long evenings of the French villagers," 
and particularly does he consider it his Christian duty to do some- 
thing to demonstrate how much we love the poor German prisoners, 
those gentlemen who wear the big P. G. for Prisonnier de Guerre on 
their backs and "ought," as the boys say, "to have an I in the 
middle." There are several hundred of them in a camp at Gondre- 
court and they are, it is said, just as well housed and fed as our 
boys, and not made to work nearly as hard. 

Now, as there was no other sort of entertainment available, I 
had set my heart on having movies in my hut on Thanksgiving. 
I had presented my request at the Headquarters office and under- 
stood the matter settled. But the Sentimental Secretary it seems 
had made up his mind that the poor dear German prisoners must 
have a treat and, other schemes falling through, he also put in a 



THE ORDNANCE 183 

request for the movies. There was only one portable machine 
in working order. Through some misunderstanding or something 
in the office, the P. G.s got the movies. To enlarge upon my senti- 
ments when the news was broken to me Thursday morning or to 
record the opinions expressed by the boys in regard to the matter, 
is not to the purpose of this tale. 

Failing our show, all that I could manage in the way of celebra- 
tion was a little box of nuts and raisins tied up with a bit of red, 
white and blue ribbon for every man in camp. The mess sergeant, 
however, outdid himself. Our Thanksgiving dinner was nothing 
less than a feast. For days the A. R. jitney had been scouring 
the country for poultry. At last the sergeant had succeeded in 
getting enough for all. He did this by assembling specimens of the 
whole feathered tribe; turkey, duck, chicken and goose. And I 
had a slice of each. But for all that I didn't enjoy that dinner 
worth six-pence. Those movies were on my mind. I tried to think 
of the touching gratitude of the German prisoners. Perhaps after 
all if one should pursue them with delicate attentions it might lead 
them to see the error of their ways. Perhaps giving them a movie 
show would inculcate, by example, a beautiful lesson of Christian 
charity and forgiveness. Who could tell what uplifting moral 
influence Charlie Chaplin or Mutt and Jeff might exert? 

Last night was our regular movie-night. In the midst of pre- 
paring for the show, Georges, the French operator, who was getting 
the machine ready, Georges the little dandy, always nonchalant 
and blase, came charging back to the counter, his eyes as big as 
arc-lights. He thrust his hands, which were full of cartridges, 
beneath my nose, fairly dancing on tip-toe in his excitement. He 
had found them in the carbide; when the carbide had gotten hot, 
"Poof!" he dramatized the wrecking of the hut with explosive 
gestures. "Cestles Boches! Les cochons!" Never again would he 
take his machine there, never, never! 

As the machine had been left at the German Prison Camp after 
the Thanksgiving show and then brought directly from there to 
Mauvages there seems little room for doubt that the prisoners 



i8 4 MAUVAGES 

had placed the shells there. Of course, if there were any poetic 
justice in things, the Sentimental Secretary himself would have 
been blown up by the Germans' cartridges, but unfortunately in 
real life things don't happen that way. 

Mauvages, December 3. 
The French Army is in possession of Mauvages. A regiment 
of artillery moved in on us yesterday afternoon. There seemed 
a never-ending line of them as they crawled into town, the horses 
just barely able to drag the heavy pieces. There must have been 
a shocking shortage of fodder in the French Army; the poor 
beasts look wretched beyond words. The big guns are lined up 
all along the street. They look like great spotted lizards in their 
green and brown and yellow coats of camouflage. Each piece 
has a girl's name carved on the muzzle. The one in front of my 
canteen is Marthe, further up the street stand Lucile and Marie. 
We watched them as they brought the guns into place, unhitched 
the teams and made their preparations to settle down and stay. 
Once settled, our perplexities began. Immediately they started to 
trickle into the canteen in search of cigarettes. To the first comers 
in a weak moment I slipped a few packages. That was enough. 
Thereafter it was just like flies to the molasses jar, and then of 
course I had to harden my heart and say no. But they wouldn't 
take no for an answer. They begged, pleaded and cajoled. I 
posted a polite sign at the end of the counter explaining how the 
canteen supplies had been brought into France without payment of 
any duty, under the strict agreement with the French Govern- 
ment that they would be sold only to Americans. But they re- 
fused to read the sign. One handsome brigadier stopped me on 
the street in order to present his petition. And at the canteen 
a little poilu with a round cherubic face, after being refused 
some nine or ten times over at the counter, followed me out into 
the kitchen to urge his piteous plea. It was dreadful, it was 
harrowing. I have never felt quite so mean about anything in all 
my life. 



THE ORDNANCE 185 

In the evening we had billed a stereoptican lecture on London. 
Forseeing that the poilus would form a large proportion of the 
audience, I tried to get an interpreter to explain the pictures in 
French to them but at the last minute the interpreter failed me. 
Notwithstanding, the Frenchmen remained courteously quiet while 
the lecture lasted. But once it was finished the atmosphere of the 
hut underwent a change. The bluecoated figures who were swarm- 
ing into the canteen now had evidently spent the earlier part of the 
evening in the cafes. I went out into the centre of the hut to see 
what was going on; all about me stretched a swarm of poilus in a 
genial mood. The door squeaked open, a little soldier came skip- 
ping into the hut. To my horror I saw he carried in one hand a tall 
tumbler and in the other a large bottle of Benedictine. The victrola 
was jigging out a rag on the counter. Posing for a minute in an atti- 
tude reminiscent of the great Isadora, the little poilu proceeded to 
dance in time to the music, pirouetting on one toe as he waved the 
bottle and the tumbler above his head with Bacchanalian gestures. 
Then suddenly he sat down at one of the tables and started to pour 
himself a glass. I swooped down upon him. It was defendu I ex- 
plained, strictly and absolutely defendu to drink in this hut. He 
stared incredulous. I reiterated with emphasis. Finally he nodded 
sulkily and, slipping the bottle underneath his arm, turned away. 
Two minutes later I caught him offering a red-nosed friend a drink 
square in front of my counter. I flew to the attack again. I told 
him it was against the rules to so much as bring wine into the hut. 
He held his ground defiantly. I wanted to take the little wretch 
by his coat collar and march him out the door; I felt I could have 
done it. Instead I plead, expostulated and commanded. A score 
of grinning poilus crowded about us: it was evidently as good as a 
show to them. I entreated the little poilu please, please to carry 
the bottle out of the hut! "Dehors! Dehors! Outside!" they 
chorused gleefully. I exhausted my vocabulary, apparently with- 
out effect. The fit tie poilu wasn't used to taking orders from a 
girl, especially one who spoke French so badly, but finally I won. 
"Bon!" he snapped exDlosively, turned on his heel and marched 



186 MAUVAGES 

out. I fled precipitately to the kitchen and stayed there until clos- 
ing time. I didn't feel equal to coping with any more tipsy poilus. 

It's curious how the whole character of a dwelling-place can 
change. When the priest and the cat and I are keeping house 
together, the old mansion is the dimmest, most decorous place 
imaginable. At night I let myself in the dark front door, locking 
it carefully behind me, — Monsieur scolded me for leaving it un- 
locked once; I had left him, he said, at the mercy of the passersby! 
— then grope my way down the cold unlighted hall and up the 
steep stairs to my chilly room and to bed by one flickering candle's 
light. The place is as silent and lifeless as a tomb. Then new 
troops come into town and suddenly everything is changed. The 
lower floor is taken over for an officers' mess and often too, for 
Headquarters. Savory odors of cooking, warm smells mount up 
the dim stairway, candles gutter in niches in the pasage-ways, 
smart-looking officers in khaki or horizon-blue as the case may be, 
meet and salute one in the hall. The tramp of booted feet, the 
ring of spurs, the clink of glasses, laughter, song, the piano played 
tumultously sometimes late into the night, — everything from 
Madelon to Mozart — and most startling, and incredible of all, 
the jangle of a telephone bell, installed for the occasion; for a 
few days we live in a strange bustling vivid world, then on they 
move and we are left again to our silence and solitude. 

Tonight as I was washing up for supper I was startled by a 
rap on my door. There stood Monsieur le Cure* and a French 
officer. I had a bad moment wondering what the cause of such a 
visitation might be. Was he going to turn me out of my billet 
perhaps? Or was he going to complain about the treatment his 
men had received in the Y.? Monsieur le Cure was ambling through 
a long and elaborate peroration. At first I could make no sense 
out of it, then suddenly I caught on. Monsieur le Capitaine was a 
stamp collector. He wanted to know if I perhaps had some stamps 
des Etats-Unis which I could spare him! 

Reports have come in tonight of friction between the French 
and American soldiers in town, resulting in a number of scrim- 



THE ORDNANCE 187 

mages. The whole trouble springs, I gather, from the eternal 
feminine and the native jealousy of the male; the Fair Sex of 
Mauvages having made quite evident to the poilus their decided 
preference for the doughboys. 

Mauvages, December 6. 

The theatrical season at Mauvages has been inaugurated. The 
carpenters were busy in the hut all day yesterday, hammering and 
sawing, making us a roll curtain out of roofing paper, manufactur- 
ing foot-lights from commissary candles and tin reflectors cut from 
the lining of tobacco cases. When the stage was done it was very 
gay. We had a red curtain across the back, bright yellow wings, 
red and yellow draperies around the proscenium arch, festoons of 
little flags strung across the top, and a large American flag draped 
centre back. It wasn't what we wanted, it was just what, by hook 
or crook we could get, and the effect really wasn't half as bad as it 
sounds. 

The programme might be classed in two parts, rehearsed and 
impromptu. For a starter we dropped a tear over Baby's Prayer, 
that bit of ninety-nine one-hundredths pure sentimentality, with- 
out which no programme in the A. E. F. is complete these days; 
after which we were adjured to "Pray for sunshine, But always 
be prepared for rain," — a quite superfluous admonition in this part 
of France at this season of the year! 

"Put all your pennies on the shelf, 
The almighty dollar will take care of itself." 
"Humph!" grunted the boy next me, "I'll bet it was a Jew wrote 
that." 

Following the songs we heard Barney, the Poet Laureate of the 
Camp, celebrate the deeds of the ordnance detachment in verse. 
At least we supposed that was what it was, for Barney has a brogue 
all his own and if you get one word in ten you're lucky. As the C. O. 
says, it is much easier to "compree" a Frenchman than it is to 
understand Barney. 

After Barney we had a sermon, a burlesque darky sermon 



i88 MAUVAGES 

preached by a black-face comedian. As luck would have it, two 
real darkies from a labor camp up the line slipped in at the back 
of the hut just as the preacher began. They took it all in deadly 
earnest, and warmed, I suspect, by a glass at the corner cafe, they 
presently began to respond to the preacher's exhortations with 
genuine religious fervor. 

"Dat'sso! You tell 'em bruder! Hallelujah! Bless de Lord!" 

The audience up front, hearing a commotion and unluckily not 
catching the comedy, hissed indignantly and the darkies, abashed, 
slunk out. 

Of course at the last moment some of our headliners failed to 
come across. The mumps claimed our dramatic reader and our 
buck-and-wing dancer sent word, just as the curtain was going up, 
that in all the camp, no shoes outside of hob-nails, large enough 
for him could be found. But we made up for these defections by 
our impromptu acts. The most surprising of these was the Little 
Fat Poilu. He popped up suddenly from Heaven knows where, a 
round rosy dumpling of a man with a shiny nose and a fat black 
beard, and offered his services. On his first appearance he played 
the violin with vim and spirit. Then in answer to the applause he 
dropped his violin, seized the tall hat from the head of the darky 
preacher, clapped it on his own, and bounced back onto the stage. 
The transformation was amazing. In an instant, instead of a 
poilu he had become a jolly little bourgeois shopkeeper out for 
a stroll on the boulevard. He proceeded to sing a comic song, a 
song with an interminable number of verses, unquestionably very 
funny and in all probability quite scandalous. The French portion 
of the audience was charmed, they joined vociferously in the jiggy 
choruses, and when he had done they insisted on another and an- 
other. For a while it looked as if France was going to run away 
with the programme, but finally the little poilu came to the end 
of his repertoire, — or of his breath maybe, and America once more 
took the stage. 

Today we are living in an atmosphere of theatrical enterprise. 
Already there are three or four " bigger and better" rival shows in 



THE ORDNANCE 189 

process of incubation. What's more, Barney is writing a play. He 
sits at one of the canteen tables surrounded by a group of admiring 
would-be actors and each sheet, as he finishes it, is gravely handed 
around the crowd. So far it seems to contain just three characters; 
Rose the beautiful stenographer, the villain landlord and the office 
boy. I am waiting in suspense to see whether Barney's master- 
piece is going to turn out a melodrama, a problem play or a 
dramatic treatise on the social and political wrongs of Ireland. 

The French troops are moving tomorrow. Tonight the Little 
Fat Poilu came to bid us good-bye. When no one was looking I 
filled his pockets up with cigarettes. 

Mauvages, December 9. 

A very regrettable incident occured last night. The day being 
Sunday we were due for a religious service at seven-fifteen. At 
seven-ten the Reverend Gentleman, who was to instruct my flock 
in the way wherein they should go, arrived in company with the 
Business Manager from Gondrecourt. Now it happened that the 
Reverend Gentleman on this occasion was none other than my 
friend the Sentimental Secretary. He surveyed the congregation; 
there were nine boys in the hut. He sat down and waited for the 
audience to arrive. But the audience didn't. Instead one wretch 
surreptitiously sneaked out the door. At last I felt it necessary 
to come forward with apologies and explanations; my flock at 
present was small to start with, the sheep had all gone to Domremy 
on an excursion, the goats were deep in an after-pay-day poker game. 

"Do you wish me to hold the meeting?" the R. G. questioned 
grimly. 

"If you will." 

The Reverend Gentleman, a bit tight about the lips, laid on. 
It was a cold night; we gathered by the fire. I tried to make myself 
look as large as possible, but stretch the congregation as you might, 
we only reached two-thirds of the way around the stove. 

"Well," said the Business Manager when it was all over with, 
"how soon will you be ready to close out this hut?" 



i 9 o MAUVAGES 

I reminded him that after all it would have only taken ten right- 
eous to save Sodom, so might not eight save Mauvages? 

Of course just as soon as the Reverend Gentleman and the Busi- 
ness Manager had shaken our dust off their feet and disappeared, 
a whole crowd of boys came streaming into the hut. I accused 
them of having waited just around the corner until they had seen 
the Religious Service depart. As for Big Bill I consider him noth- 
ing short of a slacker, he sat in the kitchen all evening and wrote a 
letter to his girl. I tell him that as hut detail it is obviously his 
duty to attend all services but he explains that "it makes him 
homesick. " 

In a town on the road between Mauvages and Gondrecourt 
there is a labor camp of Chinese coolies. These are the laziest folk 
in Europe I am sure. They are supposed to be working on the 
road, which needs it badly enough, resembling, as one boy declared, 
"the top of a stove when all the lids are taken off." All day long 
they squat by the roadside, or stand idle watching the traffic go 
by. "They'd rather be caught dead than caught working," as 
one boy said. The story goes that if one of them dies the French 
Government must pay the Chinese Government thirty francs. 
They come dear at that. Moreover, they are unconscionable 
thieves. Up on the hill back of the town where they are billeted 
there is an American aviation field. The camp was abandoned 
after the armistice, but twelve boys from the air service were 
detailed to stay and guard the property. These boys find that 
the chief end of their life is to chase the Chinks out of the 
stores; they are quite persistent and perfectly unabashed. More 
than that, if the Chinks catch one of the guards by himself, they 
are likely to attack in force armed with sticks and as our boys 
are not allowed to carry weapons, such an attack is no laughing 
matter. The trouble began, the boys tell me, in the days when 
the camp was populated; two mechanics had once thought it 
a good joke to give one of the Chinks a bath by ducking him in 
the horse-trough. 

One of these heathen, I am told, came to church here at Mau- 



THE ORDNANCE ior 

vages yesterday and almost broke up the meeting. It pleased 
him to sing all the way through the service, a wierd sing-song 
chant all his own, and as if that were not bad enough, in the 
middle of a prayer he had turned square about and started to play 
with the rosary of the scandalized Madame behind him! The 
most pious-minded could scarcely keep their thoughts on the 
priest's dissertation. There was "beaucoup distraction" as one 
Mademoiselle phrased it. 

This morning I went down to Gondrecourt. 

"Well, and how are your eight men?" asked the Business 
Manager. 

"One of them has gone to the hospital with the mumps," I 
answered. "So now I have seven." 

Mauvages, December 12. 

I have been A. W. O. L. I have been on a joy ride. For the 
first time since I came to France I have taken a real day off. I 
got a chance to go up to the old battle front on a "speeder." I 
didn't mention the matter to the office, but I took the chance. 
I knew I could safely trust the hut to the management of Bill 
and Nick for one day. 

We started out shortly after six A. M., on the narrow-gauge 
bound for Mont Sec. There were five of us on the speeder which 
is, you must know, a little flat car something like a hand-car, 
only that instead of being propelled by hand power, it is run by a 
gasolene motor. Speeders are the jolliest possible way of travel- 
ling and they can go like the wind: they possess just two dis- 
advantages, their propensity for having engine trouble, and 
the ease with which they jump the track at the slightest prov- 
ocation. It is told how in Abainville the other day a speeder 
jumped the rails, the engineer, after turning a half a dozen somer- 
saults, picked himself up, squared off, demanded; "Who in hell 
put the pebble on the track?" 

From Mauvages we followed the A. and S. to Sorcy. There 
we switched onto the line which the boys at Abainville used to 



i 92 MAUVAGES 

declare "ran through the trenches." They would tell me wonder- 
ful tales of the trips they had taken on this line; the smoke-stack 
of the engine protruded over the top, they explained, and " Gosh, 
you could hear the bullets just splatterin' against it!" 

A short ways out from Sorcy we passed the last inhabited 
village. Ahead of us we could see the barren sinister outline 
of Mont Sec, that little Gibraltar of the land which the Germans 
had captured and fortified early in the war, which the French 
had endeavored to retake in 19 15 with the most fearful losses, but 
which had remained impregnable, commanding, looking down in 
contempt on our men in their muddy lowland trenches of the Toul 
Sector, until, on September twelfth, the American Army had 
taken it along with the rest of the Saint Mihiel salient. 

As we neared Mont Sec we began to pass devastated villages, 
some of them mere formless ruins, others from a distance holding 
the shape and outline of habitable dwelling-places but on ap- 
proach revealing themselves as mere groups of riddled house- 
shells. Across the open places stretched interminable grey 
swathes of rusting tangled wire, " barbed-wire enough to fence 
Texas," as one boy put it. On sidings we passed long lines of 
cars full of salvage, all the junk of war tossed carelessly together. 
Along the tracks were scattered empty shells and here and there 
piles of unexploded ammunition. In a shell-hole by the road- 
side, half filled with water, lay a hob-nailed shoe, — prosaic but 
pitiful witness of some tragedy. It was the loneliest land, the 
most forsaken I have ever seen. Far and wide as one looked over 
the empty plain there was no living, moving creature anywhere. 

At the foot of Mont Sec we stopped. There in the woods were 
the remains of a German camp; it had been a jolly little place 
fixed up like a beer garden underneath the trees, with fancy 
" rustic" work and chairs and tables. We left the speeder there, 
and tramping across the fields, climbed Mont Sec. Near the top 
we found the entrances to the dugouts. The hill was tunneled 
through from side to side, all the corridors and rooms walled, 
roofed and floored with the heaviest oak lumber. Everywhere 



THE ORDNANCE 193 

through the passage-ways ran a perfect network of electric wires. 
Long stairs led to the different levels. No furnishings were left 
except the bunks and some rough tables. We ate our luncheon 
of bread, jam and corn willy in what had evidently been the 
officers' quarters; the room was nicely finished with cement, 
there was a fancy moulded pattern in bas relief over the door- 
way, a pipe-hole showed where a stove had been. 

After lunch we inspected the concrete machine-gun pill-boxes 
which dotted the hill-top. Then we went down the steep eastern 
slope to the village of Mont Sec. About the town, to judge 
from the ploughed and pitted vineyards, the fighting must 
have been the fiercest. The village was a village of the dead. 
We went inside the church; part of the tower, some of the walls, 
a little of the roof was left, beyond that nothing. Near the door 
a French officer had scrawled "Maudite soil le boche qui detruit 
les eglises"— cursed be the Hun who destroys the churches. In 
this church, Madame the Caretaker tells me, the Germans com- 
manded all the male inhabitants of Mont Sec to assemble. Here 
they were kept prisoners for three days and nights. On the 
fourth day they were marched off at the bayonet's point into 
Germany, and no one has ever heard a word from them since. 

Just outside the village in the little cemetery, ploughed with 
shell-holes, we found French, American and German graves. The 
German inscriptions all commemorated "heroes dead for the 
Fatherland;" one of them vowed, with the help of God, vengeance 
on the enemy. 

We went back to the speeder. As it was early in the afternoon 
we decided to go on. Rounding Mont Sec, we passed into German 
occupied territory. We saw the famous cabbage patches which 
fed our soldiers after the Saint Mihiel drive, and, on a hillock be- 
side the road, one memorable scarecrow dressed from head to foot 
as a German soldier, "feldgrau" uniform, cartridge belt, helmet 
and all. At Hattonchatel we looked down on the German barracks 
from the hill-side but didn't have time to stop. It was growing 
late, so we must turn about-face. Once headed for home our trou- 



i 9 4 MAUVAGES 

bles began. The rain which had been teasing us all day as a faint 
drizzle, settled down to business. A few hundred yards down the 
hill-side the speeder jumped the track. Fortunately we weren't 
running fast and the speeder jumped on the right side, if it had 
jumped on the left we might have gone over the edge of the moun- 
tainous hill-side. As it was no real harm resulted beyond a violent 
bumping and shaking up; I jumped and got a lame wrist. "The 
chances are, that whatever happens, she won't turn over," the 
boys told me, "so hang on after this." So I hung tight. The 
engine, which had worked like a charm all the way up, began to 
sulk and balk by fits. Presently it grew dark. We had one lantern, 
we lighted it and the boy who sat at the front end held it so the 
light would fall on the rails. Every now and then the wind would 
blow it out. At each station along the track we would stop and 
ask the engineer operators whether the block ahead was clear. 
When we came to the last station before the long forest stretches 
about Mont Sec the operator who came out to speak to us was quite 
angry; there were three trains, he said, somewhere on the track 
ahead; we were doing a very dangerous thing, running after dark. 
We went on, straining our eyes as we entered the woods in order to 
discern the dark mass on the track ahead which would mean a 
train, for the trains, in memory of war days, I suppose, carry ab- 
solutely no lights. A week ago a speeder ran head-on into a 
train at night just above Sauvoy; of its three passengers, two were 
killed, the other fearfully injured. We held ourselves tense, ready 
the moment we had made out a train, and the speeder slowed 
down, to jump, and, lifting the car, push it to one side off the tracks 
until the train had passed. Once we were lucky enough to make 
a siding just at the critical moment. Sometimes we ran at the edge 
of high embankments, sometimes we would cross, on a trestle, a 
wide marshy stream; then the thought would come to me, What 
if the speeder should jump here? And she did jump twice more on 
the way back, but luckily both times in well-selected places. The 
worst feature of these acrobatics was that the jar had an unhealthy 
effect upon the engine and after each occasion the mechanics in 



THE ORDNANCE 195 

the crowd had to delve and tinker before the speeder could be 
coaxed to speed again. Also it was wet. The rain soaked through 
my raincoat, through my sweater, into my leather jacket; my skirt 
was a dripping rag, the water oozed from my gloves, raindrops 
dripped from my nose, my "waterproof" shoes were like sponges. 
You felt, as one of the boys put it, exactly like a figure in a foun- 
tain. 

Between Mont Sec and Sorcy we got a tow. In the dark we 
came upon the rear end of a salvage train, tied ourselves up to 
it, and bumped merrily along behind until the train turned off 
on a branch line and we had to cut loose and make our own way 
with the increasingly contrary engine. Fortunately, from that 
point most of the way was down hill; on the up-grades we got off 
and walked; the last part of the way the boys simply had to push 
the car. We reached home at half-past ten, tired, soaked to the 
skin, but happy. 

Mauvages, December 16. 

After this, Mauvages is going to be on the map! Mauvages is 

to be headquarters for the Artillery Brigade, with seventeen 

hundred men in town and thousands more in the villages about. 
Wonderful to say, this is the very brigade to which my two bat- 
teries from the Artillery School belong and though neither of these 
will be here in town, still they will be near enough so I can get a 
glimpse of my old boys, I am sure. 

Already we have an ammunition train and a crowd of "casuals" 
waiting here for their outfits. The hut, which has of late been 
rather empty mornings, is now filled all day. These casuals are 
for the most part replacements, shipped here directly from the 
ports, after a ten days' residence in France. They have nothing 
to do at present but sit in the hut and think how miserable they 
are. It is funny to hear them talk. Their opinion of Mauvages 
is inexpressible in polite terms. They are quite convinced that 
they have come to the Very Last Hole on Earth. In vain I assure 
them that Mauvages is quite a fine town, as French towns go, in 



i 9 6 MAUVAGES 

vain I draw their attention to its beauties and advantages. They 
are absolutely certain that nothing could be worse ! 

Meanwhile I have been busy making frantic trips into Gondre- 
court to demand, in view of the coming crowds, a new hut, an 
electric lighting system, an addition to the old hut, anything or 
every thing, except a man secretary! But Gondrecourt takes the 
situation very calmly. 

Just to pass the time away, one of the new arrivals went fishing 
in the canal yesterday. He bestowed his catch on me; it measured 
about six inches by one and a quarter. As it was still wriggling 
faintly I put the poor thing in the water-pail, only to find later 
that Big Bill in disgust had thrown water and fish out into the back 
yard. Whereupon I raised such an outcry that Bill must go out 
in the dark and feel through the wet grass for that fish until he 
found it. I carried it down to camp, inviting the K. P.s to prepare 
it for the C. O.'s dinner. At dinner it appeared elegantly garnished 
with parsley in the center of a huge platter. Just to pay me back 
they made me eat it, while the rest dined on steak. 

"How do you suppose he caught it?" asked the C. O. I said 
nothing. Fishing with hand-grenades is strictly against the law. 

Mauvages, December 18. 

Mauvages is in disgrace. Mauvages is the black sheep in the 
Y. fold. Mauvages is in wrong all the way around. And it's all 
because of one Old Gentleman and his ill-timed opinions. 

The Old Gentleman came out to talk to us yesterday evening. 
We weren't expecting him. We were expecting a lecture on the 
Man Without a Country, — whoever that may be, Jack Johnson or 
the Kaiser! as the boys say, — by the Educational Department. 
But then we have almost given up expecting to get what we expect. 
This is only the third time we have been fooled on the Man 
Without a Country who appears to be our Old Man of the Sea. 

The Old Gentleman was brought out in state in the best Y. car 
by the Big Chief, the Entertainment Department and a driver. 
The Entertainment Department immediately ensconced himself 



THE ORDNANCE 197 

by the cook-stove with a Sunday Picture Supplement; the driver 
retired to a secluded corner to play a game of checkers with one 
of the boys; while the Big Chief took his stand out front. I for 
once back-slid scandalously, and, instead of occupying a front 
seat with a deeply interested expression spread upon my counten- 
ance, sat in the kitchen and ate jam and waffles, the waffles 
which were heart-shaped and crisp and heavenly, having been 
brought by Nick from his latest supper party. 

The Old Gentleman stood out by the stove, the stage proving 
too chilly. There was a crowd in the hut. He put his foot in it 
at the start. He announced himself as an intimate friend of ex- 
President Roosevelt. The boys, sniffing politics, grew suspicious, 
even hostile. He began on the scandal of America's unprepared- 
ness, from that passed by degrees to the view that Germany was 
not yet defeated and as a climax called upon the boys to rise and 
put themselves on record as being willing to stay in France until 
Kingdom come, if necessary, in order to do the job up brown. 
The boys did not rise. Instead they heckled the Old Gentleman 
until he grew as red as a turkey-cock and so indignant as to fairly 
wax speechless. One of the ammunition train boys, a husky lad 
who, they tell me, is an old guard house standby, led the opposi- 
tion. Out in the kitchen you could have heard a pin drop. The 
Entertainment Department and I sat and stared at each other. 

The whole trouble as I saw it, was that the Old Gentleman had 
slipped up on his dates. He was giving them a Bef ore-Novem- 
ber-Eleventh speech when it was after the eleventh. It was as if 
he had quite failed to comprehend that at eleven o'clock on 
that date the whole psychological outlook of the American dough- 
boy underwent an instantaneous change. His entire mental 
horizon became forthwith concentrated to one burning point, — 
the desire which he expresses simply but adequately in the words; 
"I want to go home!" And not ex-President Roosevelt, nor 
President Wilson, nor General Pershing, nor anybody else could 
make him interested in anything that was not remotely, at least, 
related to that issue. 



198 MAUVAGES 

At last the agony was over. The Old Gentleman came back to 
the kitchen mopping his brow. When he had finished expressing 
his opinion of Mauvages, the driver went out to crank the car. 
The car was gone. Of course then, everyone remembered having 
heard a car drive off in the middle of the lecture, — every one 
that is, but I, I had been too interested in the waffles, — but of 
course no one had really thought that it could be, etc. A search 
party was recruited which scoured highway and byway. The 
M. P.s at Gondrecourt were notified by 'phone. Meanwhile it 
was ten o'clock, a bleak night and four indignant gentlemen were 
stranded six miles from home. An ambassador was elected to go 
and lay the case before the A. R. C. O. The C. O. on his way to 
bed, instructed the emissary where billets for the night might 
possibly be had. But the Old Gentleman, upon receiving the 
information, flatly and finally refused to stay in any billet in 
town; he would sleep in his own bed or no other. After a nervous 
interval the ambassador again approached the C. 0., this time 
suggesting the loan of his car and chauffeur. The C. O., aroused 
a second time from bed, acceeded shortly, the ambassador returned 
to despatch the unfortunate Bill to camp to break the news to the 
chauffeur. The chauffeur, who was in the midst of an after- 
hours poker game, when he recovered from his astonishment, 
replied (expurgated) that he'd come when he got good and ready, 
and settled back to his game. 

In the meantime my four guests by the kitchen-stove discussed 
in part the peculiarities of the Japanese language, but chiefly the 
short-comings of Mauvages. The Chief, however, showed himself 
a gentleman. He washed the dishes up! And considering that 
he was a man and a minister and that the light was dim and the 
water cold, he washed them pretty well. 

At a quarter to eleven the A. R. chauffeur having presumably 
forced all the others into bankruptcy, or gone bankrupt himself, 
drove up to the door and I said farewell to my friends. 

This morning a rescue expedition was sent out from Gondre- 
court. It finally discovered the lost car, none the worse for its 



THE ORDNANCE 199 

joy-ride, in a ditch half-way to Sauvoy. Information has reached 
me on the side that it was a little group of "hard-boiled guys" 
from the ammunition train who stole the auto. They were dis- 
pleased with the Old Gentleman's opinions, and they made up 
their minds that he should walk home. 

So this is how matters stand: I and my hut are in discredit at 
Headquarters, because my boys stole their car. The Old Gentle- 
man has openly declared that Mauvages is the most unpatriotic 
spot in France. The A. R. C. O. is disgusted because he was routed 
twice out of bed in one night. The chauffeur is so incensed at 
me and mine at having to drive into town at eleven P. M. that he 
persistently forgets to stop for my daily papers. And the boys 
are all sore and touchy on account of the opinions expressed by 
the Old Gentleman in and after his lecture. Such is the happy 
lot of a hut secretary, 

Mauvages, December 23. 
The Big Push is here. Our lawn has turned into a gun park with 
limbers and caissons elbowing each other under our very eaves. All 
day the little hut is crowded to its capacity and at night it becomes 
so full that I am literally afraid it will burst out at the seams. 
Colonels and captains are forever bobbing up like so many Jack- 
in-the-Boxes in my kitchen which I was used to consider as a ref- 
uge and a sanctum. They have the best intentions in the world; 
they offer me advice on every subject under the sun from the 
building of new shelves in the canteen to the frequency with which 
I should require Big Bill to shave. And quite unsolicited they have 
given me a detail, — a detail of such proportions that I am swamped. 
I don't know how many there are. They never stand still long 
enough for me to count them. Sometimes there appear to be ten 
and sometimes twenty. Like the Old Woman who lived in the 
shoe, I have so many details I don't know what to do. They are 
the nicest boys that ever were, if only they didn't take up quite so 
much room! Now when I am minded to sit down for a moment to 
think, my only course is to go into the store-room and sit on a 



2oo MAUVAGES 

packing-box, and the store-room is very cold. And the worst of it 
is that they all, from colonel to K. P., have the beautiful idea in 
their heads that I am not to do any work, but just to be a sort of 
parlor ornament, and a sweet influence; that I will, in short, like 
the old man who was afraid of the cow, "sit on the stile and con- 
tinue to smile," while the army runs my hut. Which is not at all 
my notion of things. 

In the meantime we have been busy making such preparations for 
Christmas as we could. Chiefly we have decorated the hut. I 
begged two boxes full of lanterns, flags, tinsel and festoons, from 
the office, then I merely mentioned the fact that I wanted a tree 
and lots of branches to trim with and the boys did the rest. I 
don't know where those greens came from, I don't want to know. 
But there is one spectre that keeps haunting me; the apparition of 
an indignant Frenchman at my canteen door, with a bill half a 
metre long for damages. 

This new outfit has brought a heathen custom to town with 
them. The band plays for Reveille! We had been so peaceful, so 
unmilitary here in town with not so much as a bugle note to make 
a ripple in our slumbers! But now at some unimagined hour be- 
fore daylight a brazen clangour bursts suddenly forth. Down the 
street and past under my window in the dark they go, making the 
grand tour of the three streets in town, thumping and tooting as if 
their lives depended on it. I never knew a band could make such 
an amazing racket, nor could sound quite so joyously impudent. A 
bucketful of cold water couldn't dispel sleep any more effectively. 
I feel like jumping out of bed. But I don't, for it is pitch dark and 
cold and very damp. There is a fire-place to be sure in my room 
but after one or two fruitless attempts at making it produce a little 
heat I abandoned the idea and decided to spend all my time be- 
tween my bed and the canteen. But when I desire to view my 
countenance in the mirror, I have to take a towel and wipe off the 
moisture that collects on it to trickle down in little streams. 

I have received my first Christmas present. Bill and Nick — 
the dears! — have presented me a beautiful silk umbrella. I think 



THE ORDNANCE 201 

they did it largely for the honor of the family. As long as my old 
faithful only had its handle gone, they could overlook it, but when 
the ribs took to parting company with the covering, they evidently 
thought that something should be done about it. Nick went to 
Gondrecourt to buy it; coming back, he managed to fall off the 
truck, was picked up and given first aid by a kindly Frenchwoman, 
and reached home in slightly damaged shape but with the precious 
umbrella safe. I have been suggesting to Bill that he set a two 
franc piece in the handle and then I will have his and Nick's ini- 
tials carved on it, but he doesn't wax enthusiastic. 

Mauvages, December 25. 

We sat up half the night packing Christmas boxes, — seventeen 
hundred of them, one for every man in Mauvages. Two packages 
of cigarettes, a cigar, two bars of chocolate and a can of "smoking" 
went into each little cardboard box labelled in red " A Merry Xmas 
from the folks at home through the Y;" that is, theoretically they 
went in, practically it was discovered that no human ingenuity 
could so arrange the pesky things as to make them fit the box. 
So finally we decided to treat the "smoking " as a separate affair. I 
wanted badly to have Santa Claus hand the boxes to the boys 
underneath the Christmas tree, but the boys finally convinced me 
that the difficulties, including the danger of "repeaters" ad lib, 
were too great, so we fitted the boxes into packing-cases and shipped 
a case to each company and let each of the top sergeants play 
that he was Santa Claus. 

It was half past twelve by the time I passed the church on my 
way back to the billet. They were celebrating midnight mass. 
The fight of the altar-candles illumined the old windows with a 
soft radiance. They were Y. M. C. A. candles. Monsieur le Cure 
had begged them from me in the afternoon; he could get no others, 
he said, and was in great distress. 

Chez nous there was much activity. I stopped inside the door 
to chat with the cooks. They were up plucking the Colonel's 
goose and expected to make a night of it. 



202 MAUVAGES 

Sounds of gaiety were ringing from the dining-room. A young 
lieutenant, slightly touseled, thrust his head out of the door. I 
wished him a Merry Christmas; in return he asked me in to par- 
take of an anchovy sandwich. I took one look inside the door at 
the array of empty bottles, declined with thanks, and climbed the 
stairs to bed. For a long while afterwards someone downstairs 
kept mewing like a cat. It might have been the slightly touseled 
lieutenant. 

To-day it has been raw and damp and chill and grey and drizzly. 
I had a notion that I might ask the French kiddies in this after- 
noon to see the tree and receive some little gifts of cookies and 
chocolate but when I reached the hut this morning and saw how 
packed it was I quickly gave up the project. Not for all the chil- 
dren in ten villages would I turn the boys out into the rain. 

Tonight there is to be some sort of show, arranged by the enter- 
tainment officer. 

Just before dinner time the Second Lieutenant from the A. R. 
came in, looking full of mysterious importance. "The C. O. leaves 
this noon," he said. "He's ordered to report at Souilly by twelve 
tonight. I'll tell you all about it later." Later I learned. In- 
spectors had been visiting the dump. They had found it in a very 
dangerous state indeed. The wet weather has affected the ex- 
plosives so that should the sun come out for a day or two the chemi- 
cal change ensuing would in all probability cause an explosion 
which would set off the whole dump with its millions of dollars 
worth of high explosives. In which case little Mauvages would of 
course go higher than Halifax. The C. O. has been removed and 
the Second Lieutenant left in charge. The work of destroying the 
dangerous explosives is to be pursued at top speed. In the mean- 
while we will pray for continued rain. 

I received two gifts today that touched me deeply. One was a 
pretty pink embroidered scarf from the boys at the aviation field. 
The lad who brought it to me had walked twelve miles, into Gondre- 
court and back again in the sleety rain, to buy it ! The other was 
a package labeled; "Wishing you a Mary Xmas from the Opera- 



THE ORDNANCE 203 

tors at A. S. No. 9, and may the next one be in the States." Inside 
were two boxes of chocolates, their Christmas candy issue! 

As for me, I am ashamed — I have been so busy and so bothered 
that I just couldn't seem to manage a gift for anyone, not for Bill 
nor Nick nor even Monsieur le Cure. 

Mauvages, December 28. 

Neddy has come back! His battery has just arrived at Ros- 
ieres and last night he got off and walked over here to see me. 

We sat and talked by the kitchen-stove and I found him just 
the same shy, slow-spoken dreamy lad. The long months at the 
front have seemingly instilled nothing bitter in him, nor left 
any scars on his spirit, no matter if he is wearing a wonderful 
belt quite covered with German buttons all "cut off of dead ones. " 
He dug out of his pockets for me two odd little picture frames 
made cleverly out of rings from German fuses, with pieces of 
celluloid cut from the eye-holes of German gas-masks for glass, 
and held together with surgeon's plaster. Then of course there 
were the latest pictures of his girl to show me. 

He told me about the battery. On the whole their casualties 
have been light. Jones was gassed, and is in hospital somewhere; 
it seems just like Jones, somehow, to get gassed! The boys, he 
told me, had been fairly homesick for the little old Artillery 
School Hut, — most of all, he said, they had missed my hot 
chocolate. 

Then just to make the occasion perfect, who should walk in 
but Snow! Snow's battery is at Delouze, two towns away; but 
Snow has been on leave down on the Riviera, having the time of 
his young life. 

"I never could see what there was in this country worth fighting 
for," he told me, "until I went down there. But now I know." 

He had just returned from his furlough this very afternoon. 
He hadn't a thing to eat all day, being of course, "dead broke." 
I got the best impromptu supper I could and we all three sat in 
the kitchen and ate it. The menu was: crackers and canned milk; 



204 MAUVAGES 

sardines and crackers; cracker-pudding and cocoa; crackers and 
jam. The boys gossiped and swapped yarns like two old vet- 
erans. Neddy related how the gunners at the front when loading 
would pat and even kiss a shell as they adjured it not to be a dud! 

Snow told me how , the talented, the brilliant, had gone to 

pieces at the front and had been sent back to the S. O. S. This 
must have been hard on Snow for the two were close friends. "I 

said to him one day," recounted Snow, " , you must have done 

something awfully wicked in your life to make you so afraid to 
die." Undoubtedly the poor fellow's failure was due, not so much 
to lack of courage, as to over-sensitiveness and too much imagin- 
ation. The pity of it is that this will surely prove a bad blow to 
his self-respect. 

When it was time for Neddy to go I saw there was something 
he wanted to say to me. At last it came out. Around his neck, it 
seems, he is still wearing the chain with the little cross which I 
gave him when he went to the front. And he has the unshak- 
able notion in his quaint head that it was the cross which kept 
him safe! 

Mauvages, December 29. 
Tonight we gave a party: hot chocolate and cookies for the 
whole camp. Every Sunday before the Big Push came I had been 
serving hot chocolate free but I had been staggered by the thought 
of trying to make chocolate for seventeen hundred men on my 
little stove that is just big enough to sit on, over a fire which has 
to be coaxed with German powder sticks and candle ends before it 
will burn, and serving it in our sixty odd cocoa bowls. This morn- 
ing, however, I had an inspiration. I consulted the detail, they ap- 
proved. Accordingly we sent requests to three of the battery mess- 
kitchens, asking that they should each furnish us, at five-thirty, the 
largest container they possessed full of hot water. Then we asked 
the mess sergeants to annouce the party at supper and tell the 
boys to bring their mess-cups. The sentry at the street corner was 
also instructed to let no one pass without his mess-cup. Then we 



THE ORDNANCE 205 

started in, heating all the water we could manage, making choco- 
late paste, opening whole cases full of canned milk. 

At six o'clock the fun, per schedule, began. The boys lined 
up from the counter to the stage. But instead of a single line, 
it soon became evident we had two, one coming and one going, 
which together formed an endless chain like a giant wheel which 
kept slowly but surely revolving. After the second or third time 
around a boy would begin to acquire a slightly sheepish look and 
endeavor to avoid my eye, but when they found that all they got 
was a grin and "I'm glad you like it!" they grinned back un- 
ashamed. 

"I can't stop," joyfully explained one lad to me, "I'm in the line 
and I can't get out; I just gotter keep on coming round." 

"Oh boy! but that's the best thing I've had in France!" de- 
clared another. 

While a third announced; "Gee, but I'm full all the way up! 
If I drink another drop I sure will bust " — a confession which 
may have contained more fact than fancy, for some of the boys 
did drink so much that they got sick right then and there. It was 
an orgy. And when the last of the four huge containers had been 
drained to a drop, why everyone, I believe, for once had had 
enough. 

"You've got all the business in town right here tonight," one of 
the boys informed me. "I just took a look in at the cafes. Every 
one of them is empty." 

Personally I feel that the party was a Great Success. We 
shall have to have one just like it every Sunday. 

Mauvages, January i, 1919. 
Mes meilleurs voeux de Bonne Annee! or, as the boys say; "Bun 
Annie! " We welcomed the new Year in con molto giubilo. Down- 
stairs at my billet there was music until late and after that sounds 
as of a repetition of the Christmas party. At twelve o'clock by 
the old church bell, the band, which I had imagined long since 
safe and sound in bed, burst forth into music and straggled down 



so6 MAUVAGES 

the street playing "There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight" 
and all the rest of the most rakish airs in its repertoire. I stepped 
out on my Juliet balcony. The boys were setting off pyrotech- 
nics of all sorts "salvaged" from the dump; flares, colored lights, 
and rockets. The street burned out of the darkness in rose- 
colored mist against which showed black silhouettes of soldiers 
who waved their arms and shouted and sang; while from the edge 
of the village sounded a sharp tattoo of rifle shots. Just as the 
light was beginning to fade out I heard an emphatic bang of the 
front door below me and looking down saw two figures; a little 
brisk bustling one and a tall, lean one go hurrying down the path 
and out the gate. It was our Colonel and an attendant officer. 
Retribution, I knew, was bearing down upon the revellers. Sure 
enough, this morning I learned that the Colonel, sallying forth, 
had struck right and left, leaving a trail of arrests all over town. 

But even with the Colonel's sortie, quiet did not descend on 
Mauvages for some time. The party below-stairs was not confined 
to the mess-hall this time but was also being celebrated in the 
kitchen. At about one o'clock a K. P. stumbled up the stairs 
and knocked on the door of the Cure's chamber just across from 
me. He had some champagne for the Cure, he explained in thick 
and execrable French. The Cure must drink it in honor of the 
New Year. It was good champagne. I could hear the Cure 
replying from his bed in rapid deprecating sentences, but the 
K. P. held to his point; he had set his heart on the old man's 
joining the celebration. "Champagne bun" he kept repeating, 
" Vous camarade. Bun annie. " For a long time they carried on 
the argument, but finally, as the priest implacably refused to 
open his door, the genial K. P. gave up in disgust, confiding to 
his friends as he reached the floor that the Cure was, after all, 
nothing but a dried up old fish. 

This morning I went down to Headquarters to turn in my 
accounts. Alas, for the vanity of human intentions! At Christ- 
mas I had sent little boxes of fudge to several of the men at the 
office, hoping thereby to curry favour for my canteen and coun- 



THE ORDNANCE 207 

teract any bad impressions which our delinquencies in the matter 
of attending Sunday Services and appropriating other people's 
autos might have caused. Now I find I have made more enemies 
among the ones that I left out, than I made friends of the ones I 
favoured. 

In spite of this sad condition of affairs I managed to tease one 
driver into agreeing to take me to Vaucouleurs. At Vaucouleurs 
I had been told that there was a commissary where one could 
purchase candles, and the boys are desperately anxious for candles. 
At first I did not quite understand so burning a desire as 
they exhibited, but now I am wise. They want them — poor 
wretches! — so they can "read their shirts," before they go to bed! 
I stayed down in Gondrecourt, missing dinner, and then set out 
for Vaucouleurs with my heart full of hope and my pockets 
crammed with currency. It was a long, cold trip in the driving, 
drizzly rain. Arrived at Vaucouleurs we found that, being the 
first of the month, the commissary was closed for inventory. 

Mauvages, January 3. 

Everybody has a little pet trouble of his own these days. The 
A. R. has its share and more of them. Lieutenant C. recounted 
some of his tonight. He had been carrying the dangerous explo- 
sives over beyond the woods to the west of the town where they 
were being blown off. Then the French Town Major had called. 

It wouldn't do, he said, to blow off the ammunition there any 
more; there were sick people in the town and the explosions fairly 
made them jump right up out of their beds. And really one couldn't 
blame them. So then the Lieutenant had switched to the north, 
over beyond the narrow-gauge, only to be promptly visited by a 
furious delegation of engineers. Whether it was because proper 
precautions hadn't been taken or what I don't know, whatever the 
case, in the course of the explosions a large rock had made a gaping 
hole in the roof of A. S. No. 9 and narrowly missed one of my good 
friends the operators. The complaint of the engineers was shortly 
followed by an indignant ultimatum from the Captain at Abain- 



2 o8 MAUVAGES 

ville who is in charge of the railway. Unless the explosions were 
forthwith stopped, he threatened, no more trains would be run 
on the road. On top of all this the Colonel of artillery must call 
the Lieutenant to account. The boys whom he arrested New Year's 
night had been shooting off their rifles. The shells must have 
come from the dump. Since it was Lieutenant C's dump, it was 
his business to keep his shells in their proper places. Therefore 
Lieutenant C. was responsible for the shooting. 

I don't know just how the matter has been arranged with the 
Captain at Abainville, but the explosions beyond the tracks have 
been going on all day. Latest reports testify that that roof of A. S. 
No. 9 is riddled like a sieve with stone-holes and that the cook, 
who never was known to be a religious man, spends all his time 
beneath the table praying. 

Two of the ordnance boys have been badly burned while setting 
off the explosions, and the whole detachment is sore and disheart- 
ened because they are being worked so hard in the mud and rain 
and their Sunday holiday denied them. Special details from the 
artillery are being sent to work at the dump every day in order 
to hasten the work of destruction, but these boys, too, are sullen 
and rebellious. They have been used to handling shells at the front, 
they say, and they consider it an indignity to have to handle them 
here in the dump as if they, forsooth, belonged to the ordnance! 
And so the work goes none too quickly. Everyone has been in- 
structed to keep a particular lookout for German delay fuses, those 
deadly little infernal machines, which can be set, according to the 
strength of the acid which eats through the spring, to explode 
any time between a week and six months. They are disguised 
cleverly to look exactly like ordinary percussion fuses, the only 
betraying mark being a tiny six pointed star on the nose. Several 
have already been found planted in dumps which contained cap- 
tured German ammunition, and the tale runs through camp that 
some have been discovered here, although this I rather suspect is 
just another army rumor. 

Tonight one of the ordnance boys hobbled into the hut, his left 



THE ORDNANCE 209 

foot swathed in bandages; a shell had fallen on a toe and crushed it. 
I attempted to sympathize. 

"Don't waste any of your sympathy on me," he retorted, "I'm 
the luckiest feller you know. There ain't a man in camp who don't 
envy me." 

As for me, I am having a few pet troubles too. One of these 
is concerned with the army dentist at Gondrecourt. And this is 
all in consequence of the kind operators at A. S. No. 9 and their 
Christmas chocolates, for among those chocolates was a caramel 
and, — well that candy was made in Switzerland and so was prob- 
ably pro-German anyway. 

Yesterday I had to witness the harrowing spectacle of a stal- 
wart doughboy being separated from a tooth. When the ghastly 
business was over he shook himself. 

"I've been over the top," he declared, "and got filled up with 
machine-gun bullets," — he was wearing two wound stripes, — "but 
I'll tell the world them bullets weren't nothin' to that tooth!" 

But the chief of my troubles is the hut lighting problem. So 
far, I have not been able to get any response to my petition for an 
electric lighting system. Our fine carbide lamps are a frank fizzle, 
our candles are all gone, we have nothing but a few lanterns and 
small oil lamps. Every day someone breaks my heart by breaking 
another lamp chimney, and new ones, alas! are not to be had for 
love or money in this part of France. Moreover the boys have 
developed a most inconvenient habit of walking off with the lamps. 
At first I said in exasperation; "Well, let them take them! As 
soon as the oil burns out they'll find the lamps aren't any use to 
them," But I didn't reckon on their Yankee ingenuity. They are 
smart enough, it seems, to bring back the empty ones, and ex- 
change them for filled ones, every evening! 

Mauvages, January 5. 
Mauvages is in a state of mind for mutiny, and it's all over a 
little piece of cloth about two inches square. The case is this; 
the Artillery Brigade, having served six months contin- 



2io MAUVAGES 

uously at the front, having participated in all the big offensives, 
and having won an enviable reputation, was attached, on coming 

to this area, for the sake of military convenience, to the 

Division already stationed here, a draft organization which had 
never been to the front at all. The artillery were far from pleased 
over the arrangement, but they managed to swallow their pride 
and put a good face on the matter. A few days ago, however, the 
order came out that they were to abandon the insignia of their old 
division and appear — every last man of them, — with the insignia 
of the new division on his arm. The men were furious. The bat- 
teries stationed at Rosieres made a bonfire and burned the detes- 
table insignia publicly, for which they got two weeks restriction 
to camp and a new set of little red patches. One boy sewed his 
"clover-leaf," as they call them, to the seat of his breeches. Rain- 
coats have become all the wear, even in the best of weather, for 
under these the hated symbol is hidden. Indeed the feeling was 
so intense that in some places both officers and men tore off their 
service-stripes before putting on the new insignia. 

I alone in the town am wearing the insignia of the old division 
and this is a wonderful and weird affair cut out of turkey red bunt- 
ing and pinned to my sweater sleeve in a moment of reminiscent 
loyalty by my indignant detail. But the band keeps on lustily 
proclaiming the brigade's undying allegiance, for every morning 
for Reveille, as it makes the grand tour of the town it brays forth 
defiantly the war march of the old division. 

"We haven't got orders to stop that!" says the leader. 

Since the spirit of rebellion is abroad I have been managing a 
little mutiny of my own. It came about in the matter of Sunday 
movies. Up till the present we had been accustomed to having a 
sendee every Sunday night, but since the artillery moved in we 
have been furnished with a full-fledged morning service by the regi- 
mental chaplain, in view of which I had set my heart on having 
movies in the evening rather than a second service. I based my 
position on the grounds that, since to my notion at least, the main 
end of the work over here is simply to keep the boys away from the 



THE ORDNANCE 211 

things that would hurt them, on Sunday night, the most dangerous 
night of all the week, this could best be done by drawing them to 
the hut with a movie show; always provided that their "religious 
needs" had been supplied earlier in the day. 

The movie machine was at the hut, I had found an operator in 
one of the batteries, a little Jewish boy who bragged of long 
experience in the states; all I wanted was a film. I went with my 
request to the office. My logic it seemed to me was unassailable. 
But the office couldn't see it that way. After much debate we 
agreed to disagree in theory. In practice I carried off my film. 
But I did it with a sinking of the heart. My relations with the 
office have always been quite cordial, this was the first incident 
to cast a gloom over them. Anyway, I thought, we're going to 
have those movies! I advertised the show extensively. 

Sunday night came. The hut was thronged. I was feeling 
rather particularly pleased with things. We had ministered to 
the boys' souls in the morning, fortified the inner man with free 
hot chocolate at six o'clock, now we were going to finish out the 
day by satisfying their romantic cravings with a film drama of 
love and adventure. 

But oh! for the pride that goes before the stumbling-block! 
When it came to the test it seemed that the little operator, for 
all his bragging, couldn't make the movie machine go. Perhaps it 
was because the lad didn't understand the foreign make, perhaps 
it was because the machine needed to be talked to in French, or 
perhaps it was just because the project had been unblessed from 
the beginning: I don't know. We had half the camp ganged 
around the machine, offering to take a hand. Everybody was 
criticizing and advising, which, I suppose, added the last touch to 
the little operator's confusion. After waiting an interminable tune 
in the dark we witnessed a few feeble nickers on the screen and 
then darkness once more. The audience dribbled disgustedly away. 
They probably made up for their disappointment in the cafes. 

This morning the driver stopped at the hut to take the machine 
away. "Have a good show., last night?" he asked. 



212 MAUVAGES 

"Umm hm," said I, grinning cheerfully. 

I am praying that the truth about that show never reaches 
the office! 

Mauvages, January io. 

Tonight I leave Mauvages. Two weeks more and I shall be 
" homeward bound." I am so tired that it has seemed to me for 
some time that the only thing I can do is to go home. There 
isn't any room in France these days for anyone who isn't per- 
fectly strong, perfectly rested. A week ago I went to Nancy and 
persuaded the lady in charge of the women workers of this divi- 
sion, after some argument, to let me go. I have already over- 
stayed my contract by eight months. Now they have telegraphed 
from Paris that they have a sailing for me. The man secretary 
is here to take over this hut. 

Because I hate leave-takings I tried to keep the fact that I 
was going dark until the very last minute but at the end word got 
around. The boys came flocking into my kitchen with messages and 
missives for the states. Boys whom I had never to my knowledge 
seen before pledged me to call up their wives on the long distance 
telephone as soon as I should land. One boy gave me two German 
fuses weighing a number of pounds apiece to carry home. If I 
would take one for him, I might keep the other one, he said. 

"Say hello to the Statue of Liberty for me!" 

"Give my regards to Broadway." 

"Say Lady, can't you take me in your trunk?" they chorused. 

As for Nick, he has instructed me to go to Brooklyn, pick out 
the best hat in his wife's millinery store, "And tell the missus 
it's on me." 

I have taken my last agonized inventory, turned in my last 
accounts, — balanced by Big Bill. This afternoon I went to take 
my last look at the little hut. It is all torn to pieces, they have 
begun to build that addition which I started begging for a month 
ago; I slipped one of my canteen tea-cups into my bag just for old 
times sake. 

Neddy came in to say Good-bye. At the last moment he shyly 



THE ORDNANCE 213 

placed a little box in my hand. In it was a pretty gilt Lorraine 
cross. He had walked all the way into Gondrecourt to get it. He 
would have bought me a chain too, he explained with a flush, 
only he was "pecuniarily embarrassed." Dear little Neddy! If 
he only knew how much better I liked it without the chain. 

My luggage is all packed and Bill has strapped it up for me. 
I have said adieu to the Cur£ and the Colonel. Madame the Care- 
taker has kissed me on both cheeks and dropped a tear over me. 
Now I am waiting for the A. R. jitney to come and take me to the 
station. 

A horrid thought has just occurred to me. The captain's 
cognac must be still in the corner of the store-room shelf. What 
will the secretary think? 



CHAPTER VII 

VERDUN 
THE FRENCH 

Paris, January 12 

It is fortunate that the world looks tolerantly on a certain 
instability in the feminine mind. When I left Mauvages there was 
just one thought in my head, — to go straight home. I have been 
twenty-four hours in Paris; already my resolution is wavering. 
It's all on account of what they said to me at the Headquarters 
office. 

Paris is truly a different city from the one I last saw in Sep- 
tember on my way back from Saint Malo; the streets thronged 
with people, and brightly lighted at night, the shop windows 
gay and inviting, freed from their patterned lattices of paper 
strips which formerly protected the glass from the concussions 
caused by shells and bombs. In the Place de la Concorde the 
statue representing the City of Strasbourg, divested of the mourn- 
ing wreaths which it has worn ever since 1870, now smiles trium- 
phantly above a mass of flags and flowers; and, most thrilling of 
all, the crouched grey guns of Germany, like so many dumb im- 
potent monsters, throng the Place de la Concorde, stretch in a 
double line along the Champs Elysees all the way to the Arc de 
Triomphe. 

Everywhere the shop windows display a picture; a woman's 
form, heroic, bearing a great sword, with wide spread wings which 
are at the same time wings and American flags; before her the 
bent and cowering form of the Emperor; while beyond, a sea of 
khaki, illimitable hosts of warriors melting away in waves against 
the horizon; and underneath the words: 

"But what tremendous fleet could have brought hither such 
an army?" 



THE FRENCH 215 

"The Lusilania" 

The Patisserie shops are full of enticing little cakes once 
more; but, sad to say, the quality one finds has depreciated while 
the prices have gone sky-rocketing. I thought I would economise 
this noon and, instead of eating a five franc luncheon at the hotel, 
substitute a cup of cocoa and some little cakes at a tea-shop. 
When I came to pay my bill it was seven francs fifty! While I 
was partaking of my frugal repast a French Red Cross nurse came 
into the shop leading two blind poilus. She bought them each 
some cakes as if they had been two little boys and they stood 
there eating them. The poilu nearest me, a tall fine-looking 
fellow, tasted his, "Ah!" he exclaimed, "c'est une vrai Madeleine!" 
He lied. It was no more like a pre-war Madeleine than chalk is 
like cheese, but if it had been made of India-rubber I suppose he 
would have said the same thing, and said it with just the same 
grave and gracious courtesy. 

Now that the war is over, one feels sorrier than ever for the 
French officers who haven't medals. 

"The Frenchies are issuing the croix de guerre with their rations 
now," the boys used to say. And indeed when one sees a French 
officer without some sort of decoration one feels instinctively 
that something must be the matter with him. 

To go or not to go? I am thinking of a compromise. I will 
postpone my sailing, take the furlough that is due to me. At the 
end of two weeks I can calmly make up my mind. 

Cauterets, January 20. 
"There's only one poor feature about this place;" declared 
a boy today, " they won't let you stay long enough." 

This is a representative but not a universal sentiment. Some 
of the boys don't like the snow, for Cauterets being high in the 
Pyrenees, is deep in snow at present. A few complain that they 
don't get enough to eat. It is the breakfasts chiefly that fail to 
satisfy. The French having been used, time out of mind, to a 
petit dejeuner of rolls and coffee, utterly fail to comprehend the 



216 VERDUN 

American need for heartier sustenance. When the contracts with 
the hotels were made it was carefully stipulated that eggs, meat 
or fish should be served at breakfast in addition to the continental 
menu, but the quantities were not stated and to a hearty doughboy 
on a cold morning one egg is a mere tantalization, if not an insult. 
Every morning you may see them flocking in swarms to the Y. in 
order to round out their unsatisfactory breakfasts with hot choco- 
late and bread and jam. Yesterday I overheard some indignant 
splutterings from a little crowd at one of the canteen tables. 

" What's the matter, boys?" 

"They gave us fish this morning for breakfast!" 

"They did?" 

" Yep ! One sardine to each man ! " 

Yet in spite of a few such inharmonious notes, Cauterets, like 
Saint Malo and Aix-les-Bains, is instinct with the spirit of the Amer- 
ican soldier on leave. And the American soldier on leave is the 
Playboy of the Western World. When the last doughboy has 
walked up the gang-plank of the last west-bound transport, I 
think the railway officials, gate-keepers, station agents, and train 
conductors all over France will settle back in their chairs and draw 
a deep breath of relief . 

The French poilu and the English Tommy have both questioned 
often and bitterly why it was that while they must ride third class, 
the American soldier habitually traveled second and first; the an- 
swer being that you simply can't keep the doughboys out! It is 
the idea of the social distinction implied by the classes I fancy that 
makes half the trouble. However that may be, it is absolutely 
against the rules of the game for any doughboy to ride third class 
if there are any second class coaches, and equally disgraceful to ride 
second class if there is a first. I myself have seen an American 
buck private with third class transportation in his pocket stretch- 
ing his legs in a luxurious first class compartment seat, while a 
French general stood up outside in the corridor! At another time 
I took a journey in a first class compartment built for six, in which 
three English officers, an English titled Lady, her companion, two 



THE FRENCH 217 

muddy doughboys and myself were all crowded. This was an 
anxious trip for me, for not only was I worried lest an indignant 
conductor should eject the doughboys, but I was also guiltily con- 
scious of having paid only a second class fare myself! 

One joyous company of eight lads on leave whom I encountered 
on the way down here counted in their number one sergeant with a 
well-worn second class pass. Things arranged themselves very sim- 
ply. In the line-up at the gate or in the car, the sergeant, heading 
the file, presented his pass first, then, as it was handed back to 
him, slipped it behind his back to the next man and so on down the 
line. Once in a second class compartment it was usually an easy 
matter to transfer to first. This same crowd related to me how, 
when locked out of an empty first class compartment by an irate 
conductor they merely waited until the next stop, then getting 
out climbed through the window on the off side of the train into 
the forbidden seats. 

" Golly, but that old frog got a shock when he looked in through 
the glass door and saw us sitting there!" 

They were overcome with chagrin because at the last change one 
member of the party allowed himself to be bullied by a hard-boiled 
M. P. into leaving the first class car. 

"He's broken our record," they mourned; "he's disgraced the 
family!" And half their pleasure in the remainder of the trip was 
spoiled it was evident. 

Irrepressible, curious of all things, awed by nothing, the dough- 
boy cares not a snap of his fingers for the whole of French Official- 
dom. An officer told me how, when standing on a station plat- 
form the other day, an irate and husky doughboy sailed by him, 
headed for the baggage-room in search of somebody's luggage. 

"If you hear a noise, Major," he remarked in transit, "you'll 
know that I'm stepping on a frog." 

The French railway system affords him a never-failing topic 
for amusement. And truly it has its quaint points. On the trip 
down we passed over one line where the heating system for the 
cars consisted entirely of long flat metal cans filled with hot water 



2i8 VERDUN 

which were shoved in under our feet, so that, no matter how chilly 
the rest of us might be, our toes at least could travel in comfort; 
while on the walls of each coach, we observed with glee, was an 
official notice requesting the passengers to refrain from throwing 
objects such as empty bottles out the windows as numerous casual- 
ties among the employees had resulted from this practice! 

The doughboy passes everywhere by virtue of the magic words, 
"no compree" Traveling he develops a stupidity that is absolute 
and unshakable. 

"I never understand anything they say," chuckled one young- 
ster joyously, "until they begin to talk about something to eat". 

Wonderful tales are told of escapades and adventures; such as 
the story of the boy who started out to spend his leave at Aix-les- 
Bains and traveled half over Italy before he came back, all on the 
the strength of the pass- word " onion-stew" and an unidentified 
document that happened to have a red seal attached. Common 
rumour has it that the official report records sixty thousand 
A. W. O. L.s at the present date in the A. E. F. in France. I don't 
know whether this is correct, but I rather hope it is. Now that the 
war is won I am glad that in spite of Provost Marshals and M. P.s 
some of the boys at least are on the way to discovering that there 
is something more to France than just "mud and kilometers." 

Paris, February 7. 

I'm going to stay. If I went home now I would feel like a quit- 
ter all the rest of my life. I don't know where I'm going. They 
asked me if I would like to go to Germany but I said no, I didn't 
want to look at Germans. I shall have to stay here in Paris for 
a week or so anyway in order to get that wretched business of a 
broken tooth, which the Christmas caramel at Mauvages began, 
straightened out. In the meantime, I am doing what I can in a 
perfectly amateur and impromptu way to help young America see 
Paris. 

Paris is the lodestar of France for the A. E. F. From every part 
of the country it draws them like a magnet. When on leave, no 



THE FRENCH 219 

matter from what portion of France they may have come or what 
corner they may be bound for, they always contrive to get there by 
way of Paris. If the R. T. O. instructs them to change to another 
line before they reach the city, they arrive there just the same, to 
explain blandly to the M. P. that they went to sleep on the train: 
"and when I woke up, why here I was in Paris!" What dodges 
the doughboys haven't worked in order to circumvent the M. P.s 
and get into Paris without official permission, or once in Paris to 
stay longer than the short time allotted them, would be beyond 
human imagination. There is one story current, for whose truth 
though, I cannot vouch, of an American private who passed 
a week in the forbidden city in the uniform of his cousin, a lieu- 
tenant in the French Army. At the time of the signing of the 
armistice, for several days the M. P.s' vigilance was relaxed and 
boys from all over France swarmed to the city to participate in 
the festivities, but since then the penalties for the unlucky ones 
who are caught have grown more and more severe. 

Yesterday by request I took two boys to the Louvre. We 
wandered through the galleries of Greek and Roman sculptures. 
One boy, looking at the yellowed and discolored surfaces, de- 
clared himself bitterly disappointed. He had heard that the 
statues were all real marble here, but it was perfectly plain that 
they were nothing but plaster imitations! The other boy asked 
naively if the mutilated statues were "meant to represent people 
who had had their heads chopped off. " After about half an hour 
they consulted their watches, announced that we had just time to 
get to a movie show, and wouldn't I go with them? 

But if the finer points of Greek art are lost on many, there 
are plenty of other things which they do appreciate. 

" Can you climb to the top of the Eiffel tower? " 

"Where is the church that the shell struck on Good Friday?" 

"What would you advise me to buy to send home to Mother?" 

"How often does the Ferris Wheel go?" 

"Is there any place in Paris where one can get ice-cream soda?" 
These are some of the questions that they ask you. Some go 



220 VERDUN 

to the Opera, sitting invariably in the best seats to the amazement 
of the French people. Yesterday I stopped at the box-office to 
buy some tickets. A boy standing just inside the door spoke to me. 

"I beg your pardon, were you going to buy a seat for this 
afternoon?" 

"No," I said; "for Saturday." 

"I have an extra ticket. I'd be glad to have you use it." 

He went on to tell me that he was taking the six o'clock train, 
that he had bought tickets for himself and a friend for the matinee 
as a last pleasure, but that his friend had failed him. I hesitated, 
uncertain. "What's the opera?" I asked, just because it was 
something to say. 

"It's La Boheme, " he said. I fell. 

"I'm mighty glad," he told me, "I was just about to go out and 
pick up a chicken on the street, when you came in." 

The opera was a dream of loveliness. I felt as if I must have 
done something very good indeed in some previous existence to be 
thus rewarded. 

Today I encountered two boys who told me how they had 
"done" Paris. 

"We stopped at a store and bought a bunch of post cards, all 
the famous buildings and everything. Then we got a taxi. After 
that all we'd do was to show the chauffeur a post card and he'd 
drive us to it, — then we'd show him another one, and so we kept 
a-goin' until we'd seen most all of Paris. But gee! That taxi bill 
was a fright!" 

This afternoon, coming down the "Boulevard de Wop," as the 
boys call the Boulevard des Italiens, I paused beside a fiacre, 
attached to a particularly wretched looking old nag, which was 
drawn up by the side-walk. Into it were piling merrily some 
eight or nine doughboys, the cabman fairly dancing on his seat as 
he uttered frantic but perfectly unheeded expostulations. Finally 
as the cabby appeared to be developing apoplexy, I spoke up. 

"Boys, you know that really that broken-down old beast never 
could pull all of you!" 



THE FRENCH 221 

Whereupon half of them immediately piled out again. One of 
the remaining ones leaned out of the fiacre. 

"Say Lady, can you talk French?" he demanded earnestly. 

"Why a little." 

"Well tell that old guy for me, will you," he indicated the 
still disgruntled cocker who, like the rest of his tribe, was crowned 
with an ornamental "stove-pipe," "that I want him to lend me 
his hat." 

Tonight I met a girl I know who is in the Hut Equipment 
Department. She has just returned from an extended tour of 
inspection. I told her I didn't know where my next assignment 
was to be. 

"Why don't you go to Verdun?" she asked. "The conditions 
about there are worse than any other place in France. Men are 
commiting suicide there every day." 

So I wrote a note to the Office asking that I be sent to Verdun. 

Bar-le-Duc, February 16. 

Somewhere here in Bar-le-Duc there is an extraordinary thing. 
It is the Mausoleum of Rene* of Chalons, prince of Orange, and 
designed in accordance with his wishes. Against an ermine mantle, 
under a rich armorial crest, stands a skeleton or rather the rotting 
carcass of a man, half bone and half disintegrating tissue, holding 
aloft in one ghastly hand, his heart, an offering, so the story goes, 
to his lady wife. 

Every time I am in Bar-le-Duc, even it if is only an hour between 
trains, I go hunting for that skeleton; but the nearest I have come 
so far, is to find it on a picture post card. Once I thought I had 
surely run it to earth when I came upon a strange old church 
built so as to bridge a narrow moat-like canal, and so low that it 
seemed as if the water must ooze up through the stone slabs of the 
floor, but no. 

I am here at Bar-le-Duc for a few days because it seems that 
after all it isn't quite certain whether I had better go to Verdun 
or to Souilly. While my fate is being decided, I am acting as a 



222 VERDUN 

sort of errand-girl, special messenger and Jack-of-all-jobs here at 
Headquarters. 

This morning I went out in a flivver to do an errand. The 
driver told me how, a few days ago, he had carried a young French 
girl all over the country-side looking for her aviator-lover's grave. 
Finally with the help of a French officer they had found it. The 
girl had placed a wreath on the grave, said a little prayer and 
turned away. He showed me the place, three grey wooden crosses, 
one with a china wreath on it, marking the field where a large 
aviation camp had once been and now quite the loneliest and most 
deserted spot in the world. 

Coming back, I was sent to the Provost Marshal's office to 
telephone. While I waited for my connection two M. P.s brought 

in a prisoner. He belonged to the Division which reached 

France in September. Two days after he landed he went A. W. 
O. L. and had been missing ever since. By some unknown means 
he had managed to acquire a typewriter and all winter, it appeared, 
he had been living in the woods supporting himself by typing 
faked travel orders and selling them to the soldiers. He was a 
heavy-set fellow, sullen and taciturn under their questioning. 
They went through his pockets and turned out the collection on 
the table; chewing gum, tobacco, a shaving-set, old newspapers, 
screws and nails, buttons and string and matches and pins, pen- 
cils, and post cards, a knife and three toothbrushes. 

Bar-le-Duc I understand does a thriving business in A. W. O. L.s. 
One of the M. P.s told me of a lad who, when asked for his papers, 
took to his heels and was promptly pursued. 

"I chased him all over town, and finally I ran him into the 
canal," he narrated joyfully. "He stood out there with the water 
up to his waist while I stood on the bank and shied stones at him. 
And he had on a serge uniform too." 

"How did it end?" I asked. 

"Oh I let him go; I figured if he wanted to get away that bad 
he had a right to." 

Up this same canal a few weeks ago came a flotilla of French 



THE FRENCH 223 

submarines bound for the Rhine, the sailors startling the inhabit- 
ants by their sudden appearance in the streets in their naval 
uniforms and their casual references to their ships close at hand. 
Somebody was unkind enough to declare that the subs had started 
their journey from the coast on Armistice Day, but I am sure this 
must be a libel. 

This afternoon I asked if I might work in the canteen. This is 
in a French house, a few doors beyond the beautiful Officers' 
Club, the home of one of the wealthy manufacturers of the Con- 
fiture de Bar-le-Duc, lent by him, rent-free for the use of the Amer- 
icans during the war. In the course of the afternoon I became the 
possessor of a puppy-dog presented me by a motor-truck driver, 
who, following some careless remark of mine about wishing I had 
a puppy, dropped the scared little black thing in my arms and fled. 
As soon as I could collect my senses I flew around the counter and 
out the door after him, calling on him to take his dog back. But 
when I reached the street, motor-truck and driver both had 
vanished. I would have loved to keep the little beggar, but here 
I am, a transient traveller bound for nobody knows where; what 
could I do? I explained my dilemma to the grinning crowd in the 
canteen. One of the boys spoke up. 

"I'll take him and give him to my French girl," he said. I 
relinquished the little fellow regretfully. I hope Mademoiselle 
makes him a good foster-mother. 

A little while later I noticed a boy at the counter who wore 
three service stripes and two wound stripes. "What's your divi- 
sion?" I asked. He told me. He belonged to my old regiment! 
He had been in the Milk Battalion at Goncourt, and he remem- 
bered me. He was a Class B man now and in the post office at 
Bar-le-Duc. 

"What of the rest?" I asked. 

"They're mostly dead," he answered, and he told me how, 
after one charge, out of the whole Company M six men and the 
captain had come back. 

I broke down and cried; I couldn't help it. The boy, embar- 



224 VERDUN 

rassed, drew away. He is the only man I have seen out of my 
regiment since last March, and all he could say was, "They're 
mostly dead!" Dead at Chateau-Thierry, dead on the Marne, 
dead by Soissons, dead in honor, dead with glory. America, will 
you ever forget? 

Bar-le-Duc, February 18. 

Everyone here is incensed this morning over the action of the 
French troops in the matter of the theatre. It seems that the 
Americans had arranged a schedule of movies and shows to be 
given at the local theatre a month in advance. A soldier show was 
billed for tonight, the company had reached town, the audience was 
beginning to gather from the nearby villages, when the French 
troops who began to arrive in town yesterday announced that they 
had their own exclusive and immediate uses for the building. All 
efforts to arbitrate the matter have so far failed. And now word 
comes that a French lieutenant in order to be ready to repel any 
possible move on the part of the Americans to take possession of 
the theatre for the night has had his bed made up in one of the 
boxes! 

It is the greatest of pities that there should be this wretched 
element of friction between the two allies. If every American could 
have been miraculously whisked out of France the day after the 
armistice was signed the doughboy would likely have been to this 
day a bit of a popular French idol. It is this hanging about with 
no ostensible end in view that frays nerves on both sides and leads 
to a mutual stepping on each other's toes. No two nationalities 
I am convinced could be thrown into such an intimate and trying 
relationship and produce perfect harmony. There must inevitably 
be a clash of temperaments. The case in this instance, as I see it, 
is complicated to an extraordinary degree, with human foibles and 
failings a-plenty on both sides. 

We Americans have undoubtedly been guilty of bad manners. 
Quite openly and persistently the doughboy has called the French- 
man "frog" to his face and this the French have by no means en- 



THE FRENCH 225 

joyed. The odd part of the thing is that the doughboy can give 
no explanation of the nickname. 

"But why do you call them frogs? " I ask the boys. Usually 
they look quite blank. 

"It's 'cause they sound like frogs when they talk," explained 
one lad. 

" 'Cause they jump around like frogs when they get excited," 
offered another. 

Not one of them suspects that this nickname is a curious sur- 
vival of the old term of contempt "Frog-eaters" applied to the 
French by the English in the days when they were enemies instead 
of allies! 

Undoubtedly too the feminine factor, leading as it has to jealousy, 
has played its share in arousing antagonism. 

"The chief victories of the Americans in France," declared a 
French officer bitterly the other day, "are his conquests over the 
feminine heart!" 

Indeed from the start it has been an open secret that the "Mad- 
emoiselles" have taken a prodigious fancy to the American soldier. 
This is partly because he possesses the charm of novelty, partly 
because he has money and can procure chocolate and cigarettes and 
partly just because he is himself. 

"There are three thousand men in this town and three girls," 
ran a postal addressed by a joyous youngster on leave to his lieu- 
tenant; "I'm going with one of them and Abe has the other two." 

And who can blame the poilu for a certain amount of resentment, 
when, coming back from the trenches he has discovered that a dash- 
ing American stationed at an engineering camp in his home town 
has supplanted him in the affections of his sweetheart? 

On the American side there is of course the old grievance of the 
overcharging, 

"D 'you know why you don't see any Jews in France?" asked a 
lad of me the other day, "It's because they couldn't make a living." 

In part, this sense of grievance, as I see it, is justifiable. An 
officer told me not long ago that he had recently been left behind 



226 VERDUN 

when his outfit moved out from a village, as "Mop Up Officer" 
to settle the claims of the townspeople for damage done by the 
soldiers during their stay, — a pane of glass, a truss of straw, the 
tine of a pitchfork. Hearing a commotion in the town square he 
looked out; the town crier was announcing to the populace that 
now the Americans had gone the price of wine would be cut from 
five francs a bottle to two. But in part this sense of grievance is 
unjustifiable, for the American has in no small measure brought 
this state of affairs upon himself. From the start the doughboy's 
disgust with the flimsy paper bills and the puzzling tricky scheme 
of the francs, sous and centimes engendered a carelessness toward 
French money which the tradespeople took as a delightful indi- 
cation of unlimited wealth. "But everyone is rich in America! " 
I have heard them declare with childish conviction. So prices be- 
gan to rise and presently, with the prices, the doughboy's resent- 
ment, and then the poilu's; for the rise automatically put all lux- 
uries out of the French soldier's reach and this of course he in turn 
blamed bitterly on the "rich" American. Indeed the sending of a 
large body of men paid at the rate of a dollar a day into a country 
where the native troops were paid at the rate of five cents a day 
was a social-economic error which somehow, say by some system 
of reserve pay such as the Australians have, should have been 
avoided. 

Then too, the American won't haggle. The Frenchman, as a rule, 
won't buy unless he can. Prices are fixed with the expectation of a 
compromise after bargaining. Not easily shall I forget a dramatic 
scene witnessed at the "Rag Fair" at the Porte Maillot in Paris be- 
tween a prosperous householder and a "rag" seller over a second- 
hand padlock. The seller remained firm in demanding six cents 
for the padlock. The householder was equally determined not to 
pay more than five. Finally the householder with great dignity 
withdrew, only to be called back by a despairing yelp from the 
seller. He had capitulated. To the American such a performance 
seems both tedious and undignified; he either takes the article at 
the first price asked or leaves it. 



THE FRENCH 227 

Nor can it be denied that the doughboy tends to be a bit of a 
prodigal. Chief of his spendthrift weaknesses are two; he will pay 
almost any price for sweets, sink almost any sum in a present for 
his girl. Then too the universal custom of gambling in the army, 
leading to swollen fortunes for the favoured ones, has helped to 
establish standards of extravagance. An officer in charge of a 
company belonging to a negro labor regiment told me of seeing two 
of his boys in a cafe sit down to a twenty-five franc bottle of cham- 
pagne and then, the taste for some reason not quite suiting their 
fancies, walk out leaving the bottle practically untouched behind ! 

In the light of such incidents as this, who can blame the French 
people for regarding the American as a sort of gift from God benefi- 
cently allowed them at the time of their greatest national im- 
poverishment, for the replenishing of their depleted pocket-books? 

Verdun, February 20. 

The little narrow-gauge train pulled us in here from Bar-le- 
Duc at ten o'clock last night, a thirty mile run and six hours 
to make it! When I asked for a first class fare at the station 
I noticed an odd expression on the ticket-seller's face. "They're 
all the same," he said; "all second class." Arrived at the train 
I understood. The coaches were filthy and furnished with 
straight-backed wooden benches; a heap of rubbish surrounded 
the rickety stove in the centre. Shortly after we crawled out of 
Bar-le-Duc it began to rain. Half the windows were innocent of 
glass. The rain beat in through the empty sashes. Presently it 
grew dark. Several of the passengers, American, reached in 
their pockets and brought out a few grimy candle-ends. We 
made little grease-spots on the benches and stuck the candles 
there, but the gusts of wind from the empty windows kept blow- 
ing them out, so half the time we jogged along in darkness. 

Among the passengers was a little old Frenchman with one 
arm. He was returning to his native village in the devastated 
area the other side of Verdun, after an absence of four years. 
With him was his young son, an immature lad of seventeen. 



228 VERDUN 

" 'J'ai une passion," declared the old man with startling fervour; 
"j'ai une passion veritable de revoir le village de ma naissance!" 

In all probability he was returning to nothing but a crumbled 
heap of stones. 

"You are very brave," I told him. 

Ah but it was for them, the old, to set an example for the young! 
It was they who should lead the way! It was they who should 
rebuild France! His frail old body fairly shook with the strength 
of his emotion. What a strange, thrilling, tragic pilgrimage! 

Verdun resembled nothing but a ruin mercifully wrapped in 
darkness as we passed through the gate and made our way up the 
hill. We had found, luckily, a guide who had a lantern; nowhere 
else in all the city was so much as a gleam of light to be seen. 
In places, as we passed, the shells of houses still stood, staring 
down with empty eyes at us, in other places there were nothing 
but rubble mounds with here and there a narrow jagged bit of wall 
or a naked chimney standing out like a lonely monolith. 

Headquarters offices are at the Chateau on the summit of the 
hill close to the Cathedral, one of the few buildings left undamaged 
in this part of town, a rambling, ungainly, rather gloomy struc- 
ture. The second story consists almost entirely of a series of 
great empty barren loft-like store-rooms. In one of these, known 
as the Ladies' Cold Storage, I have my habitation. Supposed 
to be a sort of one-night-stand dormitory for female tourists, — 
nurses chiefly, — who are touring the battle-fields, the Ladies' 
Cold Storage is a large dusty garret with grimy rough-plastered 
walls, without a window or as much as a crack to let in any light 
or air except for a few small slits in the roof where the rain leaks 
in. A stove, a long row of cots and a tin basin on a shelf sur- 
mounted by a broken piece of looking-glass are its only furnish- 
ings. However, the L. C. S. boasts one luxury, it is equipped with 
electric lights. This helps — when the current is turned on! — 
when it isn't, we light a candle stub and stick it in an old milk can. 
The electricity is generated underground in the Citadel. When 
the Americans first came to Verdun some enterprising elec- 



THE FRENCH 229 

tricians tapped the wires and had forty lights working before the 
French knew anything about it. Upon discovery the French cut off 
the Americans, only to find shortly afterwards that another connec- 
tion had been made. This absurd performance was repeated no 
less than seven times. After the seventh time the French gave up. 

We were fairly frightened out of bed this morning by a most 
horrible hubbub, — a Klaxon gas-alarm which is used to call the 
guests to breakfast. Having heard it I am quite convinced that 
if Gabriel wishes to do the job efficiently on the last day, he will 
scrap his trumpet and take a Klaxon. 

After breakfast we newcomers hurried out to get a glimpse of 
the town. There were plenty of others likewise occupied as 
Verdun is a veritable magnet for A. E. F. tourists. The Cathedral 
is closed to visitors but we happened upon two French officers 
who kindly took us through. The roof is badly damaged and the 
stained glass of the windows shattered to bits, but beyond that the 
Cathedral is comparatively unharmed. I was much embarrassed 
when the officers informed me that the sacres pierres, the sacred 
stones from the altar, had been stolen and presumably sent as 
souvenirs to America. At first I pretended not to understand, 
but they took such pains to explain, finally taking me to the 
altar and showing me where the little marble slabs had been dug 
out, that I finally had to admit I understood. The two nurses who 
were with us were anxious to climb the clock-tower, but this, 
we found, was strictly defendu. All through the war, we learned 
afterwards, the clock in the tower had been kept going by the 
faithful verger who refused to leave his post, and what's more, 
it had kept time. But a short while ago the clock had started 
"skipping." A party of American boys had just visited the tower. 
Upon investigation it proved that one of the wheels was missing! 
Sometimes I think the French are very patient with us. 

Everywhere we went we came upon German prisoners engaged 
in the most leisurely fashion in cleaning up. There are several 
thousands of them here and more to come. Verdun is to rise from 
her ruins and live once more. Yet she can never be in any sense 



230 VERDUN 

the stately city that once she was; for while the business and 
poorer portions of the city below the hill are not irreparably 
damaged, the finer part with its stately mansions and exquisite 
specimens of mediaeval architecture is wrecked beyond repair. 
The most serious obstacle in the way of making at least some small 
portions of the city habitable at present lies in the great difficulty 
of obtaining window-glass. 

From the Cathedral we went to the Canteen-in-the-Convent. 
How the nuns would stare, I thought, if they could see their 
virgin precincts in possession of a mob of boys in khaki, white and 
black, interspersed with the blue-coated poilus! Across the back 
of the building runs a wide terrace, once worn by pious feet of 
patient sisters engaged in holy meditations. Here among the 
lounging boys stand life-sized carved and colored images of saints 
and angels. Their size of course prevents them from travel- 
ing to America as souvenirs, but even so they must stand witness 
to the irreverence of young America, for the Angel Gabriel is 
hideous in a German gas-mask! 

After dinner we went on a trip through the Citadel, that vast 
underground soldier-city with its miles of corridors and rooms enough 
to harbor a whole army, a little world deep underneath the earth. 
We saw the bakery which bakes bread not only for the whole gar- 
rison but for all the troops in the vicinity; the Foyer, a writing and 
recreation hall, named in honor of President Wilson; the movie 
theatre; and the hospital with its wards and operating room, — 
what a nightmare horror I thought to be sick in those damp and 
dimly-lighted subterranean caverns! But we were not allowed to 
see more than the outer door of the chapel which they say is sump- 
tuous, since it is enriched by all the costly furnishings and precious 
images moved there for safety's sake from the Cathedral. Nor 
were we shown the underground caf e* where, I have been told, an 
unusually good brand of beer is sold. 

From the Citadel, rumour has it, tunnels lead out to the circle 
of forts that form the defences of Verdun, but if you ask a French- 
man if this is so, he only looks wise and keeps mum. 



THE FRENCH 231 

Verdun, February 25. 

I don't believe there is another canteen quite like my canteen 
in the whole of France. It is a canteen for French civilians. The 
one-time inhabitants of Verdun and the devastated area beyond 
are allowed by the government, it seems, just twenty-four hours 
in which to visit their former homes, after which they must re- 
turn as there is no food for them here and very little shelter. In 
return for many favours the French authorities asked the Y. to 
co-operate with them in running a sort of rest-room for these 
refugees; they supplying a detail, and we supplying the materials 
to make hot chocolate which is given away, and a secretary to 
take charge. The canteen is in the College Buvignier at the foot 
of the hill. There is a dortoir in the building also, in charge of 
the man who was once manager of the principal hotel in the city; 
two long halls full of cots with straw mattresses where the ref- 
ugees may pass the night. My assignment to this canteen is only 
to be temporary. 

The room where my canteen is must have once been quite beau- 
tiful, high-ceilinged with wainscot panelling below and embossed 
leather covering the walls above. Even now in its state of dingy 
disrepair, with half the panes in the tall arched windows replaced 
by dirty cloth, it keeps something of its old dignity and charm. 
Beyond the main room is another smaller one, connected by two 
doors, in which the detail lives and in which we make our chocolate. 

When I took over the canteen from the man who had been in 
charge of it, it was absolutely bare except for four tables and 
some backless wooden benches. My first act on assuming charge 
was to clean house, my second was to persuade the detail to make 
the very watery chocolate richer. After that we proceeded to 
refurnish and adorn. We ran a frieze of war-pictures in color, 
taken from a child's pictorial Eistoire de la Guerre around the 
top of the wainscoting, hung French and American flags from 
the chandeliers, teased the French authorities into bringing us 
some nice upholstered armchairs for the old ladies to sit in, and, 
finally, put a little pot of primroses or snowdrops, dug with a 



232 VERDUN 

broken tile from a ruined garden, in the centre of each table. 
Then a kind secretary bound for Bar-le-Duc was persuaded to go 
shopping for us and brought back an array of French magazines, 
hand-picked, and an assortment of toys to amuse the kiddies who 
must often wait here with their families between trains, though 
so far, it must be confessed, it is chiefly the detail who have been 
amused by them. And now I am wondering what there is to do 
next. 

Besides the hot chocolate, we carry on a trade in bread, a huge 
sackfull of which is brought us fresh every day from the under- 
ground bakery on the back of a little round-faced poilu; and we 
do a brisk business in checking parcels, without checks. Yes- 
terday a rabbit was left all day in our care. I was sorry for the 
poor beast cooped up in the little box and wanted to give it a 
drink of water, but the poilus insisted that this would be fatal. 
Whether this might possibly be a zoological fact, or is just part 
of the national prejudice against water, I can't determine. 

At first, remembering my difficulties with the French Army 
at Mauvages, I was a little apprehensive as to how my two poilus, 
Emil and Guillaume and I might get along. But though I am 
sure they think me the oddest creature in the world, and my pres- 
ence here unconventional beyond words, yet their behaviour 
could not possibly be more courteous, considerate and deferential. 
They won't even allow me to wash the chocolate cups. 

"Mademoiselle will soil her hands!" 

And they are forever telling me that I am working too hard. 
"But Mademoiselle will be fatigued!" Which is so absurd as to 
fairly exasperate me. 

Besides Emil and Guillaume we have four soldier friends-of- 
the-family, as it were, who also frequent the back room. The 
canteen is supposed to be a strictly civilian affair, but we make an 
exception in favour of the four camarades, and they repay us by 
helping chop the stove-wood which is stacked in a great pile 
outside the door and is nothing more or less than the stakes to 
which were once fastened barbed-wire entanglements. Each 



THE FRENCH 233 

stake still bears two little rings of wire around it and every few 
days one has to clear out the accumulation of barbed-wire en- 
tanglements from the chocolate-stove. Les defences de Verdun 
the poilus call the wood-pile. The poilus are all artillerymen 
from a regiment of "75s." Guillaume has brought down three 
Boche planes, he tells me, and Emil five. One of the poilus is a 
handsome brigadier, or corporal, who wears wooden shoes. I 
said something about sabots the other day. But don't they wear 
sabots in America? The poilus were astonished to learn that 
wooden shoes were unknown among us! There is also a sergeant 
who is the aristocrat of our little circle, a dreamy looking lad, a 
student of architecture at the Beaux Arts. Yesterday he shyly 
proffered me an envelope; in it was a pretty pen-and-ink sketch 
of two little girls, one in the costume of Alsace, the other of Lor- 
raine, proffering bouquets, and underneath was written, " Souvenir 
of a Frenchman who thanks America for having given the victory 
more quickly," Our poilu friends are constantly straying into 
the back room in order to read the newspapers here and to get 
a cup of hot chocolate. Every now and then they all get together 
and hold a vin rouge tea party. On these occasions it is evidently 
a mystery to them why, though I join them in eating bread and 
cheese, I always refuse the vin rouge I 

The politeness of the poilus is equalled by that of the clientele. 
They are extraordinarily grateful for what little we do for them. 
Today an old lady, in spite of anything I could say, insisted on 
tipping me with a two franc piece! I spent it buying chocolates 
and cigarettes for the poilus at the Canteen-in-the-Convent. 
Every class of society flows into my little canteen from gently 
bred ladies under the escort of immaculate officers to old men who 
resemble nothing but the forlornest vagabonds. The cheerfulness 
and courage of the refugees in general is astonishing. One would 
think that a room full of people engaged in such a mournful 
mission would be a gloomy place, but on the contrary, although 
occasionally you see a woman quietly sobbing, at most times we 
fairly buzz with pleasant sociability. The women come in with 



234 VERDUN 

faces bright with excitement. "Oh the poor Cathedral!" they 
cry. 

"Did you find anything of your home? " I ask. For a moment 
the tears swim in their brave eyes. "Rien" they answer shaking 
their heads. "Nothing!" 

Today an old man in a long white apron smock was the centre 
of attention here. He was busy searching the ruins of his house 
for buried treasure. Every little while he would come back to 
the canteen w T ith the fruits of his pathetic salvaging, — a few silver 
spoons, some paint brushes, a bolt of black velvet ribbon, — place 
them in a basket and then return to look for more. Two German 
prisoners were digging for him. Finally he came back with six 
unbroken champagne glasses and a face scored with tragedy. 
He had been hoping against hope to recover the treasures in his 
wine cellar but he was too late, not a bottle was there left! 

Verdun, February 28. 

This morning I went out on a truck to Fort Douaumont. This 
is the fort which was captured by the Germans, held by them 
for five months, and then retaken by the French and marks the 
enemy's nearest approach to the city. Oddly enough the French 
were the gainers through this occupation to the extent of a splen- 
did electric lighting system introduced by the Germans into the 
fort! 

A modern fort does not resemble in the least the idea that one 
has of a "fort." Viewed from outside it is nothing more or less 
than a hole in the ground. Once inside we had the sense of being 
in a monster ant-hill as we followed our guide through a net-work 
of tunnelled corridors. We saw the room of the Commandant 
with its wonderful relief maps both French and German of the 
Verdun hills, we saw the war-museum, the Foyer, the store-rooms 
and engine-rooms, the magazine rooms where the big shells were 
stacked like cord wood, and we climbed up into the turrets of 
the disappearing guns. In this strange fort w T hich has been both 
friend and enemy we looked through one empty doorway into a 



THE FRENCH 235 

pit of ruins open to the sky, under the wreckage sixteen Germans 
lay, they said; it was here that a French shell had broken through. 
We passed by another door which bore a sign on it announcing 
that this was the tomb of five French mitrailleurs who had been 
killed by a German shell in the room within; instead of burying 
the bodies they had simply sealed up the door and left them. 
Then we ducked through a little low door and climbed up over 
the hillock which forms the roof of the fort as it were. All about 
us stretched the abomination of desolation of the battle-fields, 
wracked tortured earth, seared and scarred into a yellow-grey 
desert waste. Here and there lay bones, human bones, some- 
times scattered loose, sometimes gathered in a little heap with 
a rusty helmet and a broken rifle lying close beside them. Only 
a few hundred feet from the road, the man who guided the party 
told us, he came yesterday upon two unburied bodies. 

To the north-east we could just discern a large wooden cross. 
A French officer who was stationed at the fort pointed it out to 
us. Here, he said, lay buried no less than twelve hundred French 
soldiers. They had been given a fine of trench to hold, the officers 
were taken from them, they were to expect no reinforcements 
or relief. They were left there knowing it was only a question of 
days or hours. When the French finally reached the line again 
every man was dead. So they left them where they lay and filled 
the trench in over them, but each man's rifle they took and 
planted upright in the earth beside him. There is a heroic theme 
for a poet! 

When I reached the canteen again I found a ragged disconsolate 
old soul occupying one of the benches. On seeing me he began a 
sad recital of sore feet, ending with the petition that I procure 
him a pair of rubber boots and emphasizing the point by taking 
off his shoes then and there and exhibiting his troubles, — which 
weren't pretty, — to me. I was perplexed, not knowing what to do, 
when the friendly M. P. on the beat happened in; so I put the case 
up to him. He told me that there was a salvage dump at the 
station. We set out together and succeeded in finding an enormous 



236 VERDUN 

pair of rubber overshoes, and, what's more, in getting away with 
them. The old man was pleased as Punch, put them on and hob- 
bled off in them. Tonight someone told me a melancholy tale. An 
M. P. stationed upon the hill had spied an old Frenchman going by 
in a pair of American overshoes and had straightway held him up 
and ordered him to relinquish what was Government property. 
And the old man perforce had to sit down in the street and take off 
his shoes. 

Speaking of boots reminds me of the tale told me by a doughboy 
the other day; a tale of a pair of tan shoes, handsome, shiny, new 
tan shoes which was sold to every man in turn in his whole com- 
pany only to be finally purchased as a bargain at thirty-five francs 
by an unsuspecting Frenchman. They were beautiful shoes, the 
boy assured me, the only trouble was that they both happened to 
be for the left foot. 



CHAPTER VIII 

CONFLANS 

PIONEERS, M. P.S AND OTHERS 

Jarny, March 2. 
I am living in a hospital. Being in the occupied territory, 
the hospital has been for the last four years, of course, a German 
hospital. Over the doorways are painted such pious mottoes as 
"Gruss Gottl" and the theatre, for there is an amusement hall in 
the building, is adorned with a back-drop on which a Siegfried- 
esque hero overlooks an ideal German landscape wherein a picture- 
book castle perches on the top of an impossible mountain. At the 
other end of the hall is painted an enormous iron cross. The 
masterpiece of the collection, though, is on the wall of the basket- 
ball court and is, naturally, a portrait of His Late Imperial Maj- 
esty, although one indentifies him rather by inference than rec- 
ognition, for the countenance having recently served for a pistol 
target is battered almost out of human semblance. The main 
part of the hospital is occupied by the Y. ; in the wings some two 
hundred ordnance boys are quartered; we ladies find comfortable 
lodging in the operating room. There are five of us here at present, 
two American girls, besides myself, and two Englishwomen. 
These latter are ladies of high degree, I gather, being related to 
bishops and other such personages. They go under the unvary- 
ing title of the " British Army, First and Second Battalions.' , 
According to report they were sent over here from England to do 
propaganda work, that is, to create a pleasant impression on young 
America and thus help to forge another link between the two 
nations etc., but this they indignantly deny. However that may 
be, the boys derive a rather wicked joy from teasing and arguing 
with the good ladies, and particularly from filling them full of 



23S CONFLANS 

amazing tales about "The States." Even the Secretary can't 
resist the temptation to "rag" them, and though they are usually 
very patient under his plaguing, today at dinner we received a 
shock. In response to one of his more daring sallies, the Bishop's 
sister, fixing the Secretary with an icy eye^ lifted one patrician hand 
to her august nose, and thumbed it! Which only goes to show 
that even an English Lady of Quality has human moments. And 
if we on our side must laugh a bit at them, it is plain to see that 
they, in their turn, find us infinitely amusing. In fact I half sus- 
pect, since they spend hours every day covering sheets of paper 
with close, fine handwriting, that the good ladies are engaged upon 
writing a book concerning the peculiarities of their American 
cousins when seen at close range. And in view of all the wonder- 
ful material the boys have furnished them, that book should make 
rich reading. 

There are three Y.s here in a little triangle each a mile apart, 
all under the same management; Jarny, Conflans and Labry. 
Within this triangle, besides the ordnance detachment, there is a 
regiment of engineers, two companies of pioneer infantry, a tele- 
graph battalion and a detachment of negro labor troops. 

When the Americans came here last November, the town, they 
tell us, was an indescribable mess, the roads choked with aban- 
doned military material and fitter of all sorts. To the Americans 
as usual fell the pleasant task of cleaning up. Sometimes I think 
that if France doesn't come out of this war as clean as the classic 
Spotless Town it will only be because the Americans weren't here 
long enough. And yet, funnily enough, France being cleaned up 
by America has often provided a spectacle analogous to a little boy 
having his face washed against his will. At Bourmont, when the 
Americans sought to make the town sanitary by a liberal use of 
disinfectants, a frantic protest went up from the inhabitants: their 
wells, they claimed, had all been ruined! At Gondrecourt the 
Mayor presented a formal complaint; the Americans were wearing 
away the streets, he said, by too much cleaning! And on the other 
hand this sort of work proves none too pleasant a pill for American 



PIONEERS, M.P.S AND OTHERS 239 

pride to swallow. Today a young New York Jew came into the 
canteen. He was a handsome fellow and in civilian life evidently 
something of a dandy. He belonged to the pioneers and he had 
been engaged all day, I gathered, in following about at the tail of a 
dump cart, picking up tin cans and rubbish. 

"My God!" he suddenly burst out. "If my wife could see me 
now! My God! if she could see me!" 

One day last fall going down a street I passed a boy who was 
engaged in a particularly dirty sort of cleaning. He looked up, 
caught my eye, stood grinning sheepishly at me a moment. Then 
he drawled, half humourously, half -bitterly: 

"And my mother thinks I'm in the trenches!" 

Conflans, March 10. 

After so many weeks of wandering, I have settled down to a 
job again. The last six "huts" in which I have been were in a bar- 
racks, a casino, a private house, a convent, a college and a hospital. 
This "hut" is in a hotel. The hotel is situated directly back of 
the Conflans- Jarny railroad station. Before the war the hotel 
was a prosperous and pleasant place, judging from the photograph 
which Madame showed us; its windows filled with real lace cur- 
tains all matching! as she pointed out; the broad terrace in front on 
sunny days filled with little tables and crowded with well-dressed 
people. Now, after four years of German occupation, it is a melan- 
choly spectacle; ragged, dingy, half the panes gone from the win- 
dows, its front painted over with staring German signs. There are 
two entrances, one into the hall leading to the rooms given over to 
the Y. the other into what we call the "Annex," a little cafe" kept by 
Madame and Monsieur, the proprietors of the place. Next to our 
red triangle sign stares a board announcing brazenly in red and 
yellow Vin et Biere; but the irony of the juxtaposition is quite lost 
on the French; indeed yesterday Madame asked me if I couldn't 
get her the loan of a truck to go to Nancy for a load of beer! 

Madame and Monsieur have been here all through the German 
occupation. The Germans weren't bad, Madame told me, if one 



2 4 o CONFLANS 

were very meek and never said a word, but did just exactly as they 
said, — she had had some difficulty to be sure, reducing her more 
temperish spouse to the proper attitude of meek submission! — but 
they had made a clean sweep of everything of value; all her linen 
that she had carefully hidden, her copper utensils, everything. 

The Y. consists of a canteen room, a reading and writing room, 
store-room, kitchen and office. When I first saw the place it was 
as uninviting as anything could well be; dark, dirty, ill-smelling, 
the walls covered with soiled ragged paper. But now it is very 
nice; the dirty cloth in the window frames has been replaced by 
vitex, the windows hung with pretty curtains, new electric lights 
have been added, and best of all, the walls entirely covered with 
German camouflage cloth and decorated with bright posters. This 
camouflage cloth is a Godsend; woven of finely twisted strands of 
paper, it comes in three colors, a soft brown, a yellowish green and 
a dark blue, resembling, when on the walls, a loosely woven burlap. 
It was used by the Germans to conceal and disguise military ob- 
jects and was left here in large quantities when they evacuated. 
The Americans hereabouts use it for every imaginable purpose; for 
covering unsightly walls, for curtains, for officers' mess table-cloths. 
Then there are the ammunition bags made of paper cloth which the 
boys use for laundry bags. "When in doubt, camouflage," is the 
motto. I chose brown for my canteen and now it is on the walls 
I feel that no millionaire could ask for anything prettier. Only 
I wonder; will they ask me to join the paper-hangers' union when 
I get home? 

Besides running the dry canteen, we serve hot chocolate free every 
night for all comers here, filling up their canteens so the boys can 
take it away with them, and run a free lodging-house. Every day we 
have boys coming into the canteen asking for a bed. So after nine- 
fifteen we stack all the chairs and tables at one end of the writing- 
room, and bring out canvas-cots and blankets from the store-room 
for our lodgers. There is only one unfortunate feature of this 
scheme; the lodgers become so attached to their blankets that they 
are all too apt to carry them away with them the next morning! 



PIONEERS, M.P.S AND OTHERS > 4 i 

A man secretary and I are to run the hut together; a minister 
in the states, here he answers to the unvarying title of " Chief. " 
The " Chief" I find at present chiefly remarkable for his trousers. 
These are garments with a past apparently and a present of such 
a sort that in the company of ladies he is only rendered at ease 
by assuming a sitting posture. If compelled to rise he backs out of 
your presence as if you were royalty or goes with the gesture of the 
little boy who has been chastised. Outside the house, no matter 
how fine the day may be, he goes discreetly clad in a raincoat. 

" I must," declares the Chief at least six times a day, "go to Toul 
and get a new uniform." 

"Amen," say I under my breath. 

Besides the outfits stationed in town there are some twenty more 
in the neighborhood which draw their rations here at the railhead 
and then there are the leave trains on their way to or from Ger- 
many, whose passing, like a visitation of locusts, leaves the can- 
teen stripped and bare. The negro labor troops in the vicinity 
supply quite a new element. Sometimes this takes the form of a 
bit of humour. Last night I had drawn several cups of cocoa 
ahead of the demand when a darky lad came shyly up to the counter 
and pointed to one. 

"Please ma'am," he asked, "am dat cup occupied?" 

There is one fat and genial little darky who is a constant cus- 
tomer, always he comes in munching a sandwich or an orange or 
some other edible bought from a street-vendor. 

"Eating again, Jo?" asked the Chief today. 

"Why Boss," expostulated Jo, "I only eats one meal a day! But 
dat," he grinned, "am all de time!" 

"Shines" the boys invariably call them. 

Tonight we were amused to see a negro corporal, who, not con- 
tent with the chevrons on his sleeve, had sewed an additional pair 
on his overseas cap! 

Conflans, March 14. 

My family at the hut consists of the Chief, Harry, Jerry and 
Slim. Harry and Jerry are as nice lads as one could find anywhere, 



242 CONFLANS 

but Slim is the bird that hatched out of the cuckoo's egg. Lean, 
uncouth, according to his own claim, "the tallest man that Uncle 
Sam's got in his army," with an inordinately long neck and an 
Adam's apple so prominent as to give him the appearance of an 
ostrich in the act of swallowing a perpetual orange, "Slim Old 
Horse" as the boys call him, seems to me at times more like an ani- 
mated caricature of the middle west "Long Boy" than a being of 
flesh and blood and bone. How he ever became attached to the Y. 
is a point on which nobody seems certain, but here he is and here he 
sticks in spite of every effort to dislodge him. I fancy his "Top 
Kick" was only too glad to get rid of him and when he discovered 
Slim's inclination toward the Y. simply let him go and washed his 
hands of him. Slim's health is uncertain. Most of the time he 
only feels well enough to sit in the office and eat or "chaw." 

"I started in ter chaw terbaccer," — he talks with a nasal twang 
which is impossible to reproduce, — "when I was a kid four years 
old; when my daddy an' my mammy found it out, they sure did 
start ter raise hell with me, but I says to 'em; 'All right, have it 
your way, but then it will be whisky and rum fer mine, when I'm 
twenty-one!' So my mammy says 'Let 'im chaw.' An' I've 
chawed ever sence." 

"I've only got one lung," he remarked the other day, "and that's 
a little one." 

"Slim," I urged, "I'm worried about you. You oughtn't to be 
here. You ought to be in the hospital where you could be properly 
cared for. Go to your medical officer and tell him from me that 
he must send you to the hospital." 

Slim reluctantly departed. I dared to hope we had seen the last 
of him. But before the afternoon was over he was back on his 
old perch. He had brought some little pills back with him. Just 
wait, I thought, until I meet that medical officer! 

Slim seldom feels attracted to the meals at the mess-hall. So 
he sits in the office and lives chiefly upon cheese ; Y. M. C. A. cheese 
purchased to make sandwiches for the canteen at a cost of a dol- 
lar and a quarter a pound. Sometimes he fries himself eggs, tak- 



PIONEERS, M.P.S AND OTHERS 243 

ing whatever mess-kit, Harry's or Jerry's or mine, happens to be 
handy and never, in spite of anything I can say, will he wash it up 
after him ! Sometimes Harry and Jerry and I decide that instead 
of going to mess we would like to have a supper-party at the can- 
teen ourselves, and then the question is, how to get rid of Slim? 

"Slim, it's getting near chow-time," we say, "I'll bet they're 
going to have mashed potatoes and brown gravy tonight. Isn't 
that 'Soupy' I hear going now?" 

But Slim refuses to budge any more than a bump on a log, so 
we usually have to end by inviting him. But if I find Slim a bur- 
den, how must the Chief feel toward him? For Slim has appro- 
priated the extra cot in the office, which also serves as the Chief's 
bed-room, and so has fairly camped down on him. And the Chief 
is a gentleman of nerves and delicate perceptions. 

"He gets up in the middle of the night," confided the Chief 
to me today in an almost awe-struck voice, "and he goes for the 
water-bucket and drinks a half a pail without stopping. He 
makes a noise just like a horse swallowing it." 

I have given up trying to do anything with Slim. Nothing 
that I can say seems to make the least impression on him. Slim 
is a married man, yet yesterday I caught him embracing Louise, 
Madame's cross-eyed maid of all work, in the passage-way. I 
undertook to reprove him. 

'Why that ain't nawthin !" he turned a blameless and unabashed 
eye upon me. "That's jest a man's nature." 

This is the first time that I have eaten regularly from a mess- 
kit and I am learning things. I have learned that the aluminum 
mess-cup draws the heat from the hot coffee so that it is impossible 
to drink out of one until the liquid has become half-way cold, 
and that it is most unappetizing to have to wash one's mess-kit 
afterwards in a pail of greasy soap suds in which a hundred odd 
other mess-kits have already been bathed. I used to tease the 
boys with their mess-cups in the chocolate line by telling them 
that I could tell just how recently they had had inspection by 
the shine on their mess-cups, but now whenever I look at the 



244 CONFLANS 

state of my own cup I think I won't have the face to ever tease 
them that way again! I have also learned that cold "gold fish" 
or "sewer carp," as the boys call their canned salmon, is just as 
bad as they say it is, and that slum made of hunks of bacon, 
potatoes, onions and unlimited water is no easy thing to swallow. 
But this sounds ungrateful and I don't mean to be, for the cooks are 
nice as can be and never say a word no matter how late I may be. 
While as for the boys, they put on all their company manners for me. 

Here at the hut we are busy building an addition in order to 
enlarge our restaurant business. This is in the shape of a room 
on the terrace. The Germans had kindly built a roof over one 
end, a detail from the ordnance detachment at Jarny is enclosing 
the sides; we are to have three real glass windows looking out onto 
the street and a door connecting the terrace-room with the present 
canteen. This afternoon the detail ran out of lumber; the Chief 
managed to get the loan of a truck to fetch some more. He asked 
Slim to go with the truck. The afternoon wore away, neither 
Slim nor the truck appeared, the detail, disgusted, sat and twiddled 
their thumbs. Nobody could understand what had happened 
as the lumber yard was just around the corner! Jerry went out 
to search. There was no trace of Slim or the truck to be found. 
About five o'clock he turned up. He had gone to Mars-la-Tour 
he told us coolly. We had been talking of going to the commissary 
at Mars-la-Tour for canteen supplies, and that great goose had 
gotten into his head that the lumber was to be obtained there! 
At least that is his explanation. But Harry and Jerry insinuate 
darker things: 

'We didn't know you had a girl in Mars-la-Tour before," they 
tease. "Oh Slim, you old devil, you!" 

I wonder now, just what was he up to in Mars-la-Tour all after- 
noon? 

Conflans, March 19. 

Why is it that all the world loves a rascal? What is the secret 
of the fascination that outlaw and free-booter have exercised 



PIONEERS, M.P.S AND OTHERS 245 

from Robin Hood down to Captain Kidd? Is it because each 
one of us, in our secret hearts, would like to go and do likewise, 
if we only dared? Of all the minor piracies committed by the 
A. E. F. in France, none, I think, are so picturesque as those of 
the ■ — Engineers. 

The — Engineers are a railroad regiment. My first acquaint- 
ance with them was last summer. A company of these engineers 
was located at a station on the Paris line just north of us. It 
was a point at which supplies for the American front were trans- 
ferred from the standard gauge to the American narrow gauge; 
in order to effect these transfers the — Engineers had a switch 
of their own. Now freight trains in France are quite unguarded 
and so at the mercy of marauders. Indeed the losses in transit 
have been so serious that since the armistice it has been the custom 
to have cars containing American goods " convoyed " to their 
destination by soldier guards. Last summer of course the 
men could not be spared for convoy duty. So it was the eas- 
iest thing in the world for the — Engineers to "cut out" a Y. 
or a Red Cross car, side-track it, and lighten the load at their lei- 
sure. 

"I went through their company store-house while I was there," 
a Q. M. sergeant told me, "and it was as well stocked with deli- 
cacies as the store-rooms of a big hotel back in the States." 

No wonder there was such a dearth of supplies at Abainville 
last summer! 

But it was after the — Engineers moved into the occupied 
area here following the armistice that they performed their most 
notorious exploits. Assigned to run a stretch of railway in co- 
operation with the French, a certain amount of friction was 
inevitable from the start, the red tape in the French railway 
system exasperating the Americans as much as our more direct 
methods scandalized the French. Finally the French protests 
at the Americans* disregard for the formalities of railroading 
moved the engineer officers to stricter discipline. "I'll hang the 
next man of you who runs a train out of the yards without a pilot!" 



246 CONFLANS 

declared one captain. After that things went more smoothly, — 
on the surface. Then came the Dance. 

Now unfortunately for the — Engineers there is an extra 
large M. P. force here at Conflans under a Major whose greatest 
delight in life is the detection and punishment of both major and 
minor infractions of the law. 

The Dance was quite an affair over which the — Engineers 
had spread themselves and to which the French fair sex was 
generally invited. When the party was about to begin, however, 
it became evident that the feminine partners afforded locally were 
all too few. Some bold soul had a bright idea; a train-crew forth- 
with hurried down to the yards, commandeered an engine and a 
couple of cars, and, in spite of the horrified protests of the French 
railroad men, ran it to a nearby town. Here they filled up the 
train with girls from the village and were about to start back 
again when a detachment of M. P.s, rushed up in autos from 
Conflans, broke in upon the scene. A sanguine scrimmage en- 
sued, resulting in a victory for law and order. 

In the meanwhile, back at the dance hall the engineers were 
waiting in impatient expectation for partners. Among the in- 
vited guests were two friendly M. P.s, old soldiers, with genial dis- 
positions and several wound stripes to their credit. When word 
reached the party that the M. P.s had prevented the arrival of the 
" Mademoiselles' ' the engineers were furious. "Kill the M. P.s!" 
went up the cry. Catching sight of the red-arm bands on their 
two innocent guests the crowd started for them with the evident 
intention of making a beginning then and there. Heaven only 
knows what would have happened if the two M. P.s, by affecting 
an exit at the double-quick, hadn't immediately made their escape, 
unharmed but badly scared. 

The most notable exploit of the — Engineers occurred not 
long afterwards. It is referred to as the Affair of the Serge Uni- 
forms. One fine day, not very long ago, it was noised abroad that 
a car full of tailored serge uniforms, consigned to and paid for by 
officers of the Army of Occupation in Luxembourg, was standing 



PIONEERS, M.P.S AND OTHERS 247 

down in the yards. The idea of going home in an officer's serge 
uniform from which, of course, the braid on the cuffs had been 
discreetly ripped, made a strong appeal to the boys' imaginations. 
When the time came for that car to be sent to Luxembourg 
it was found to be quite empty. But for once the Engineers 
had gone too far. The M. P. Major took the war-path. Word 
flew around the camp that a strict search was being conducted. 
The possessors of the incriminating uniforms must get rid of 
them and get rid of them quick. Some hid them in out-of-the-way 
places, between the floors and ceilings in the half-ruined houses; 
others frantically ripped the uniforms to pieces and burned them 
in the barracks stoves. The camp, they tell me, was full of the 
stench of scorching woolen. Still others got rid of them by plant- 
ing them among the possessions of their innocent neighbors. One 
company postal clerk, a most upright and blameless lad, to his 
horror discovered one of the fatal uniforms stuffed in a mail-bag 
lying at his feet. Before the search party had made its rounds 
most of those serge uniforms had been safely disposed of; a few, a 
very few were found. 

But now, having been baulked in his attempt to bring the 
culprits to justice, it is common rumour, that the M. P. Major 
is lying low, waiting to "fix" the — Engineers. 

Conflans, March 23. 
The — Engineers have left. They are on their way to Le 
Mans, presumably the first stage of their journey home. Their 
departure was not unmarked by incident.* At the last moment, 
when they had all entrained and were ready to pull out of the sta- 
tion, the M. P. Major sallied forth, court-martials in his eye, to 
search the trains for contraband. But he had reckoned without 
the Colonel of the engineers who flatly refused to allow any such 
procedure. Being outranked by the Colonel, the M. P. Major 
was seemingly helpless. Then, however, the Colonel made a bad 
mistake. There were two train loads. The Colonel left with the 
first. The second, being left without any protector of sufficiently 



248 CONFLANS 

high rank, fell an easy prey to the Major. He searched to his 
heart's content, discovering several articles of unlawful loot and, 
one unfortunate clad in one of the notorious serge uniforms! The 
train was held in the yards while the M. P. Major indulged in an 
orgy of court-martials. 

On the morning of the departure the captain of the motor 
unit where we had messed stopped in to speak to me. He came by 
request of the boys to bring an apology for any careless language 
which might have been uttered unwittingly in my hearing! Then 
the captain of another unit called to tell us, sub rosa, that, forced 
by shortage of transportation, he was leaving behind an over 
supply of rations which would be ours for the fetching. We 
fetched accordingly and found that we had fallen heir to dozens of 
loaves of bread, sugar, coffee, canned meat, canned tomatoes, 
hard bread, soap and unlimited beans. What to do with these 
surreptitious stores is now the embarrassing question. One simply 
can't offer the boys hard bread, tomatoes plain or scalloped, in the 
canteen, no matter if one should dress them with all the sauces of 
Epicurus and serve them on gold-plate. Yet they mustn't be 
wasted. What's more, the fact that they are in our possession 
must be kept absolutely dark, lest we get the kind captain into 
trouble. I feel something like the man who was presented with a 
million dollar check and then found he couldn't cash it. 

With the — Engineers went Harry, Jerry, and Slim. I couldn't 
believe until the last moment that Slim was actually going. His 
departure almost compensated for the loss of Harry and Jerry. 
But though gone, he is not forgotten. This morning a lad came 
into the canteen. He would like his watch please, he said. I 
looked blankly at him. He explained; several days ago, just as he 
was leaving on a long truck-trip, he had broken the strap of his 
wrist watch. Happening to be in front of the Y. just then, he had 
brought it in and left it for safe-keeping "with the Y. man in the 
office." The Chief knew nothing of it. 

"What did the Y. man look like?" I questioned. 

He described him. It was Slim. We have searched every nook 



PIONEERS, M.P.S AND OTHERS 249 

and cranny of that office, hoping to come upon the missing watch, 
in vain. 

"I'll come in again," said the boy. "Perhaps by that time you 
will have found it." 

But personally I am sure that that watch is now on its way 
to Le Mans, en route for the States. Was there ever anything 
more wretchedly embarrassing? 

Conflans, March 27. 

This is a curious world. Six "Relief Trains" pass through 
here every day bound east, loaded with food for Germany. Mean- 
while in the little half-ruined hamlets within a stone's throw of 
the tracks the French villagers, for whom no provision has been 
made, are famine-stricken. 

Lieutenant A. came in from the little town of Pierrefond which 
lies between Conflans and Verdun yesterday. 

"They have nothing to eat there," he told me, "but the weeds 
they dig up in the fields for salade and the frogs they catch in 
the marshes. When the days are cold the frogs bury themselves so 
deep in the mud that they can't be caught. There is one old 
gentleman who told me today that he had existed for weeks en- 
tirely on a diet of turnips. They come to me and beg pitifully 
for a bite of something from the mess-kitchen, but I don't dare 
let them have it, as that would be, of course, strictly against regu- 
lations." 

I thought of those bushels of beans in the store-house. It 
was taking a chance of course, because after all it was government 
property and nothing else, but I told the Lieutenant that if he 
was willing to run the risk, I was; then I put it up to the Chief. 

This morning the Lieutenant came in with a flivver. We drove 
over to the store-house and loaded it up with army beans, issue 
coffee, sugar, rice, onions, potatoes and soap. Then we filled a 
special sack with canned soup, "gold fish," corn meal, canned 
tomatoes and corn syrup for the old gentleman who had lived on 
turnips. I felt he had a special claim on our sympathy. 



250 CONFLANS 

We reached Pierrefond after a long drive in a stinging rain. 
It was a quaint pathetic village with a pretty little church whose 
tower had been sliced off as neatly as by a knife. Was it a German 
or a French shell which had done it, I wondered. We drew up 
in front of the Mayor's house. He came out to greet us, showed me 
a list of the seventy- three inhabitants of the town; men, women 
and infants in arms. All the supplies were to be duly weighed and 
measured and distributed, so much per capita. While they were 
unloading the flivver we stopped in at Madame C.'s for coffee and 
compliments, and to dry out by her hospitable fire. Everyone 
made pretty speeches, of course, and Madame bestowed on me a 
delectable bouquet of wall-flowers and daffodils. Poor things! 
It's little enough one can do for them. This will keep the wolf 
from the door for a short while perhaps, but after that, what then? 

Pierrefond, like Conflans, was occupied by the Germans for 
four years. Now there is a young half-German population grow- 
ing up, even as many as three to one family. The villagers accept 
the situation with tolerant humour; "Souvenirs Bodies," they call 
the children. 

As for the rest of the rations, I made jam sandwiches with the 
bread and bestowed them together with hot chocolate on a hungry 
leave train. What to do with the "Charlie Horse," as the boys 
call the canned roast beef, was a puzzle. Finally I made a paste 
of it mixed with bread crumbs, tomato soup, a few weenies and 
some ham scraps, pickles, parsley, onion and an egg, — we had six 
assistants in the kitchen and each added an ingredient, — put it 
between slices of bread and christened the result "Liberty Sand- 
wiches. Guaranteed to contain neither Gold Fish nor Corn Willy." 
The boys ate and wondered and came back for more. 

Conflans, March 30. 

In our back yard a detail of German prisoners is busy cleaning 

up; already they have made quite a transformation. Madame 

must have a garden. I wonder, as I watch them, what their state 

of mind may be; their phlegmatic faces give no hint. Did some of 



PIONEERS, M.P.S AND OTHERS 251 

these very ones, perhaps, make merry in this self same caf£, only 
six months ago, when they were conquerors? 

Madame tells me how, when the German officers were living here 
at the hotel, they ate off priceless old French plates, which, appar- 
ently quite ignorant of their value, they had carried off as loot. 
Madame, coveting these treasures, tried to arrange an exchange with 
the mess orderly, offering a number of modern dishes in return for 
one antique; but the mess orderly, fearing that some officer might 
notice the substitution, hesitated and before they could come to 
an agreement the precious plates, with the rough handling ac- 
corded them, had all been broken to bits. 

Some of the boys seem to think that the French don't give their 
prisoners enough to eat. The Germans, they say, when they get 
the chance, will wait outside the mess-hall door and seize eagerly 
the leavings in the mess-kits that the boys are about to throw away. 

" Maybe it's just because they're greedy," I say. " Surely they 
look fat enough!" And then a picture comes back to my mind, 
the picture of a Red Cross train seen while waiting at Pagny on my 
way to Paris last January, a train full of French prisoners who were 
being brought back from Germany, so weak from starvation that 
they lay on stretchers or sat pressing against the windows faces as 
wan and white as spectres. 

The German prisoners, according to the boys' repeated stories, 
are by no means a humble or repentant lot. They're not beaten 
for good, the prisoners invariably declare. Just as soon as the 
Americans have gone and things have calmed down a bit, they are 
coming back to France again, they say, and this time they will 
settle matters with the French for good and all! 

Last night a train load of German prisoners in box cars pulled into 
town. When the doors of the cars were opened it was found that one 
of the prisoners had died on the way. The dead man was wrapped in 
a blanket and left lying on the freight station platform. A "shine" 
from the labor battalion happened along in the dark, tripped and 
fell flat over the body. He came into the canteen in a state of 
nerves, quite prepared, evidently, to see a ghost in every corner. 



252 CONFLANS 

Conflans, April 2, 

The latest member of our household is something quite new in 
the way of details. He is a Salvation Army man and a very nice 
fellow indeed. A year or so ago he was beating a big drum in front 
of GimbePs Store; then he was drafted to come to France with the 
pioneers; now he has applied for a discharge in order to join his 
organization over here; and while waiting for his release he is prov- 
ing himself an invaluable aid in the canteen. Now more than ever, 
since The Salvation Army, as everybody calls him, has joined our 
force, I have been longing to realize a dream which I have cherished 
ever since I came to France, — to make doughnuts for the A. E. F. 
I have the recipe, I can get the materials, the stove is the sticking- 
point. At present our cooking equipment consists of a hot water 
boiler and a wretched German range which is really fit for nothing 
but the scrap-heap. As the boys say, I have lost more religion than 
I ever thought I had over that stove! So while we hope and hunt 
for a doughnut-stove we are specializing in sandwiches and pud- 
dings. The puddings are my special pride as I worked out the 
ideas for them myself and, as far as I know, they are served in no 
other canteen. There are four of them; Coffee Jelly, Raspberry 
Jelly (made with the " pink-lemonade" fruit juice) Chocolate Bread 
Pudding, and Blackberry Bread Pudding. The bread-puddings are 
baked for us, by kindness of the cooks, at a nearby mess-kitchen. 
The only trouble with the puddings is, that there never is enough! 
But lest anyone should think that I take this as a compliment to my 
culinary skill, I must explain that the boys would eat anything you 
offered them, I believe, just as long as it was sweet and was a change. 
And then there is perhaps a quaint psychological factor too. 

"A man don't like to eat food that's cooked by a man," a lad 
confided to me the other day. "Anything that's cooked by a 
woman tastes better." 

So if a boy does leave any scraps of pudding on his plate it bothers 
me unreasonably. 

" Somebody didn't like his pudding," I remark mournfully to 
the S. A. as I pick up the dishes. This amuses him. Last night 



PIONEERS, M.P.S AND OTHERS 253 

as we were clearing up before we closed he marched up to the 
counter, deposited a tiny wad found on one of the tables in front 
of me. 

" Somebody," he declared in a tragic tone, "didn't like his chew- 
ing-gum!" 

Nor can I boast, as a cook, of a record of unvarying success. On 
more than one occasion I must admit to having scorched the cocoa, 
and once, not many days ago — to my shame be it said! — I ruined 
a ten gallon can by putting in salt instead of sugar! 

Here at Conrlans we have an unusual amount of competition in 
the light lunch line. The other day a French fried potato booth, 
like a hot-dog booth at a country fair at home, established itself 
on the terrace just outside our door. Now a hungry doughboy can 
take the edge off his appetite with a paper full of hot French fries 
in return for a franc at any hour of the day. 

Also in the street below the terrace are many little stands where 
oranges and sandwiches made of rolls and slices of sausage are on 
sale. The rivalry between these stands, it appears, is acute. Yes- 
terday, hearing a hubbub, I looked out to see a comic battle in 
progress, the proprietors of two neighboring stands, a fat frowsy 
old woman and a little ragged man like a weasel, pelting each other 
for all they were worth with rotten oranges while half the A. E. F., 
it seemed, stood around and cheered. Nor did matters settle down 
to calm until a gendarme and intervention appeared on the scene. 

This morning I stopped in at the little French store around the 
corner to buy half a dozen eggs to make a custard sauce for my 
chocolate bread pudding. When the man gave me my change I 
noticed he had overcharged me by twenty-five centimes. 

"Why's that?" I asked. 

"That," returned the shop-keeper, "is because you picked them 
out by hand." 

Some canteen ladies can cook and wait on the counter and open 
milk-cans and wash the chocolate cups and yet keep spotlessly and 
specklessly clean. But I have come to the conclusion that as long 
as I live in Conflans, with its air full of smoke and soot from the 



254 CONFLANS 

train yards, and its water so hard that it curdles the soap, — and 
sometimes the milk in the cocoa too, that I will have to content 
myself with being godly and leave the cleanliness till a happier day. 
We have been having a regular plague of inspectors and investi- 
gators of late. Last night just as I had my final bout with the last 
chocolate container, a major and a lieutenant colonel wandered 
in, evidently in search of scandal. The lieutenant colonel fixed 
a piercing eye on me. 

"So you are the only 'white woman' in this part of the world 
at present? " 

"Well," I said looking at my fingers smudged with cocoa, "to- 
night I should say that I was a pale chocolate-colored woman." 

"I noticed that your face was dirty," coolly returned the gentle- 
man. I hurriedly excused myself in order to consult a looking- 
glass. Sure enough, there on my nose was a large smudge of soot! 
I must have got it the last time I stoked the chocolate-stove. 

Conflans, April 7. 

The M. P.s live in the hotel next door. Naturally we see a 
good deal of them. I try to treat them extra nicely because I 
feel sorry for them. They can't help being M. P.s any more than 
they can help being unpopular. And though many of them go 
about with a chip on their shoulders and an attitude of I-don't- 
give-a-tinker's-damn, still to know that you are anathema to 
the major portion of the A. E. F., to be publicly referred to as 
Misery Providers, Mademoiselle Promenades, and Military 
Pests, besides being made the subject of songs such as; Mother 
take down your service flag, Your son is only an M. P., must be 
galling to the most insensitive. 

Just as soon as the armistice was signed the doughboys started 
in to pester the M. P.s with the classic taunt: 

"Who won the war?— The M. P.s!" 

For a long while the M. P.s could think of no more crushing 
rejoinder than the time-honored; 

"Aw, go to hell!" 



PIONEERS, M.P.S AND OTHERS 255 

But lately some bright soul has hit upon a bit of repartee that 
goes far to salve the M. P.s' self-respect. Now if a soldier is so 
rash as to jeer; "Who won the war? The M. P.s!" the response 
comes instantly: 

" Yep ! They chased the doughboys up front!" 

There are two M. P.s from the detachment next door who have 
lately joined themselves to our family. Like Slim, they came 
unsolicited, and like Slim, they stick. They are known respect- 
ively as the Littlest M. P. and the Fattest M. P. 

The Littlest M. P. is a pest. I feel sorry for him because he 
is so young and has no mother; otherwise there would be no tolerat- 
ing him. He hangs about the canteen from morning until late 
at night under pretence of assisting us, and eats and eats and 
eats and eats. The other day I heard him proudly averring that 
he hadn't taken a meal in the mess-hall for two weeks, and I 
believed him. Yet when you ask him to do any particular piece 
of work, like filling up the wood box or fetching a pail of water, 
in return for his board, he always has some perfectly good reason 
for not doing it. Besides which, he has no morals. The other 
day he confided to me triumphantly that the reason that they 
didn't put him on guard work was that they knew he would take 
money to let men into caf£s at prohibited hours. He went on to 
tell me about the town of S. 

"That was a good place, you could get twenty-five francs for 
lettin' a feller into a cafe* out of hours there.'* 

I have tried to find out what he does in return for Uncle Sam's 
dollar a day and have discovered that his job is sweeping out 
the halls in the M. P. Hotel. 

"But I skip about twenty feet at each end every time, so it 
don't take me more'n ten minutes." 

Yesterday morning he came in with an air of righteousness 
rewarded. 

"I told 'em I'd got to have help on that job," he announced, 
"so they put another feller on too." 

This morning I got so exasperated with him that I told him 



256 CONFLANS 

in unmistakable terms that we could dispense with his company. 
He disappeared, and I congratulated myself that we were rid of 
him. But at supper-time he bobbed serenely up again. 

"Some fellers would have got sore if you'd spoke like that to 
them," he told me with a magnanimous air, "but I just took it 
as a joke." 

Now what is one to do with anybody like that? 

The Fattest M. P. is the most unleavened lump of good-nature 
I have ever known. He is, I understand, a notorious poker-player 
and his breath, to my embarrassment, betrays the fact that he 
has a weakness for Conflans beer. Besides which, he really takes 
up quite too much room behind the counter. Yet in spite of all 
this, he is such a simple soul and is. so anxious to help that one 
hasn't the heart to send him away. 

Yesterday I thought I was going to be arrested by an M. P. 
I had gone over to Verdun in an army flivver to get some stock. 
Turning the corner into Conflans on our way home we were halted 
by the upraised billy of the M. P. on duty. 

"Sorry, Buddy!" he called to the driver, "but you can't do that!" 

Then, approaching, he got a closer view, turned red as fire and 
stammered; 

"Beg your pardon, Miss. Made a mistake. That's all right, 
driver, you can go on." 

Later he sent apologies to me at the canteen. It is, of course, 
against regulations to allow civilian women to use army trans- 
portation. The M. P., catching sight of a skirt, had taken me 
for a Mademoiselle on a joy-ride. 

Conflans April 7. 
We must start an Orphans' Annex here, the boys tell me. 
Three nights ago as it was drawing on toward closing time the 
Chief called me into the office. By the table stood two young 
boys, about fourteen and sixteen I judged them; each carried 
on his shoulder a little sack which evidently contained all his 
worldly possessions. They were German boys from Metz; they 



PIONEERS, M.P.S AND OTHERS 257 

had just come in on the train. Why had they come? we asked 
them. They had come to join the American army. But they 
were too young! He was eighteen, declared the elder. He dug 
into his pockets and produced documents. I looked at two of 
the papers, they appeared to be the birth certificates of his father 
and mother. Had his parents given their consent? He nodded. 
"And you really are eighteen?" "Ja! J a wohll" It was hard 
to believe, — he was so small. We stared at them a bit helplessly. 
Then, finding our German not quite adequate to the occasion, 
we called an interpreter. But to all the interpreter's questioning 
the boy returned the same unvarying answer. He had come to 
join the American army! As for the younger one, he merely stood 
and smiled and looked as guileless as a young angel. Whatever 
the elder one's intention might be, I was sure I could divine the 
younger's. He, I am certain, had set his heart on being an Amer- 
ican "mascot." And he, for all his innocent and engaging air, 
had most patently run away from home! 

We told the boys that we would put them up for the night. 
I busied myself in getting them some supper and then — another 
waif appeared! A little French lad of thirteen, with a peg-leg 
and a crutch, he came shyly hobbling into the office, and the 
face he lifted to us was one of the sweetest, the most sensitive 
and appealing that I have ever seen. Silently he tendered us a 
letter. It had been written by an American lieutenant; the 
bearer, it stated, was an orphan of the war; he had been shot by 
German machine-gunners near Verdun; his right leg had been 
amputated at the thigh. I looked at the crippled child in appre- 
hension. How would he take the presence of the Germans? But 
my question was already answered. The little German lad and 
the French mutile had drawn close together, seemingly drawn 
instantly to each other by a bond of childish understanding. 
Although neither could speak the other's speech they appeared 
to be communicating in some shy wordless way. Later, as we 
were getting the cots ready for the lodgers, passing the empty 
canteen room, I glanced inside. Somebody had started the vie- 



258 CONFLANS 

trola on the counter to playing a waltz, and to its music the 
German boys were dancing while the little French lad gaily kept 
time with his crutch! 

We fed the three of them and put them up for the night. The 
next morning the French lad took his leave. Later he came back 
to see us dressed in a little American uniform; he had been adopted 
by one of the companies here. The German lads stayed with 
us, or rather, they slept and ate with the M. P.s next door and 
spent the rest of the day with us in the canteen. They loved to 
help about the counter; they were quick and deft and willing. 
The only trouble with the arrangement was that I fairly went 
distracted trying to talk three languages at once ! 

Two days afterwards, the M. P.s having taken the matter in 
hand, the German boys were sent back to Metz. But the French 
lad comes in often to visit us. We see him playing ball with the 
soldiers in the street in front of the hotel. This morning the S. A. 
and I stood watching him. 

"I wouldn't mind it so much somehow," the S. A. remarked, 
"if he didn't have that wrap-legging wound so tight around that 
pitiful little peg-stick!" 

The tenderness toward little children which the war has shown 
forth so vividly has been a revelation of an inherent sweetness 
in the boys' natures; this fondness for children other than their 
own, being, I believe a distinctive characteristic of our American 
men. Any number of companies have mascots, little French 
boys, orphans usually, whom they dress in miniature uniforms, 
take about from place to place with them, and, of course, spoil 
quite shamelessly. And in every unit that possesses a mascot 
you find boys whose dearest wish is to adopt the little fellow as 
his own and take him back home; but this the French law forbids. 

"That's the best part of France, the little kids," remarked 
a boy to me as we passed a group of little tots by the road-side. 

Unfortunately though, this petting has another side. Spoiled 
by the soft-hearted soldiers, the French gamins have developed 
into a brood of brazen little beggars. They have come to regard 



PIONEERS, M.P.S AND OTHERS 259 

all Americans, it seems, as perambulating slot machines for 
"goom" and chocolate with whom, however, the purchasing 
penny is quite superfluous. I shall never forget being held up, as I 
was walking with a doughboy through the streets of Lourdes, by a 
tiny lad who demanded pathetically; 

" Une cigarette pour tnoi, et une pour Papa y et une pour Maman qui 
est maladeV 

Nor the fifteen year old conductor on a suburban tram line 
near Paris, who took up our tickets with a forbidding scowl, and 
then, his rounds made, hurried back down the car to confront us 
with the wistful childish plea: "'Ave you goom?" 

For some while there has been a red-headed urchin of perhaps 
thirteen years hanging about the hut. As he was dressed jn an 
O. D. blouse, breeches and leggings, I concluded that he was 
somebody's mascot. He kept coming into the canteen to buy gum 
and cigarettes; presently I discovered he was purchaser for a little 
gang of ragamuffins who would wait for him just outside the door. 
I asked the boys in the canteen if they knew anything about the 
red-head, but no one seemed to know who he was or to what outfit 
he belonged. The boy himself seemed stupid and sullen when I 
questioned him. Finally I told him that I could sell him nothing 
more. Tonight my friend the M. P. Sergeant asked casually; 

"Do you remember that red-headed kid that used to hang 
around? Well we've got him and eight others." 

"Why, what for?" 

"They're Propaganda Kids. They came over here from Ger- 
many; they've been stealing American uniforms and smuggling 
them to the German prisoners so they could escape in them." 

CONFLANS, ArRIL 1 5. 

Of all the roads over which I have ever passed, the road from 
Conflans to Verdun will remain, I think, most sharply etched upon 
my memory. 

Leaving Conflans, as one passes through the occupied territory, 
the predominant impression made upon one's mind is of signs. 



2 6o CONFLANS 

German military signs. These are everywhere, painted in great 
staring letters on the sides of buildings, covering bill-boards set at 
the road's edge, or hung suspended from the branches of trees over 
the truck drivers' heads. Here in this German sector behind the 
lines every movement was timed, ordered and regulated. No one 
could possibly go astray, no one could lose a moment in hesitation 
as to where he should go, in what manner and at what rate. Half- 
way between Conflans and the lines you come upon two great bill- 
boards at the highway's edge, one duplicating the other, in order 
that, marching past, what might have been missed on the first 
board, could be supplied by the second. They are headed "Under 
Enemy Observation!" and give in strict detail the order of pro- 
cedure from that point forward, both by day and night, just 
what strength the marching groups should be and how many 
metres should intervene between them. The German thorough- 
ness, the German system! Everything has been thought of, every- 
thing provided for, everything possible done to reduce the indi- 
vidual to an automaton, a mere senseless cog in a vast machine. 
And yet among all these signs there is one that lacks, a sign that is 
notable by its absence; it is the sign that should read Nach Verdun. 

Once across the lines on the French side you are struck by the 
startling difference; here the only signs that one sees are two, 
poignant in their simplicity and directness. They are Poste de 
Secours and Blesses a Pied. 

Every time I approach Verdun by this road I thrill when I 
think of the enormous energy that poured along it, directed, it 
must have seemed, irresistibly, over - poweringly against the 
city in the hills; a thrill only surpassed by the emotion that one 
must feel when he traverses the Sacra Via on the other side of 
Verdun, the "Holy Way" over which men and munitions flowed 
incessantly to the defense of the beleaguered city. 

Everywhere one sees the ineffaceable scars of struggle^ the 
aftermath of destruction. The stately trees bordering the road- 
side, the trees that Napoleon ordered planted along the highways 
of France, are barked with great ugly gashes where mines had 



PIONEERS, M.P.S AND OTHERS 261 

been placed, the exploding of which would have felled the great 
trees across the road, blocking the pursuer's way. Others bear 
platforms high up in the branches where machine-guns were placed. 
Rotting camouflages of every sort, paper strips woven like 
lattice, curtains of branches woven through wire which once 
screened the road for miles from the enemy's observation, now lie 
disintegrating in the ditches. Shell holes pit the fields, concrete 
" pill-boxes" lurk in unsuspected places, every mound is shelter 
for a dug-out, walls are riddled with ragged holes cut for machine- 
guns. Further on, one comes to the trenches zigzagging in what 
seems erratic and aimless patterns and the interminable barbed- 
wire entanglements, like the devil's brier patches. 

Half across the open plain that lies before the hills of Verdun 
you come upon a German tank defence, a long line of heavy 
concrete pillars with enormous cables, once highly electrified, looped 
between. A little farther and the road crosses an impromptu bridge 
thrown hastily over the great gaping crater torn by an exploding 
mine. And always here and there over the plain, little heaps of 
glimmering whitish stones which mark the places where once were 
villages. Starting to ascend the hills, one looks down upon a ghost 
city, a city where many of the walls still stand, making you think of 
nothing but a huddled host of tombstones, a city chalk-white, 
naked, as if the flesh were all picked away from its dead bones; the 
most haunted, the most wraith-like, the most desolate of any. 

Climbing the hills, sweeping around one slow curve after another, 
one beholds suddenly before him, a lesser hill ringed by higher 
ones, Verdun, scarred, wounded, but victorious, like the Winged 
Victory of Samothrace, mutilated yet triumphant! 

When I first made the trip from Verdun to Conflans there were 
still good pickings for the souvenir-hunter by the way; shell-cases, 
helmets, gas masks lying along the roadside; but lately it has looked 
as if these trophies had been thoroughly gleaned. Nor does one 
wonder where they have gone when one sees the flivvers piled high 
with homeward bound souvenirs pulling in at the post office 
around the corner. But will they reach home, is the question? 



262 CONFLANS 

Ominous rumours are abroad that salvage plants have been estab- 
lished at the base ports for the particular purpose of confiscating 
shell-cases on their way to America, and thereby saving the Allies a 
fortune in brass. Some of the boys are inclined to try to carry their 
trophies with them rather than entrust them to Uncle Sam's mail 
service, but this entails some trouble to prevent their seizure dur- 
ing inspections. Nowadays, passing by, one can tell when an in- 
spection is in progress within, by all the junk which is hanging out 
of the barracks windows! Homeward-bound troops have already 
discovered a use for gas masks not mentioned in the Drill Manual: 
the cases provide an excellent receptacle in which surreptitiously 
one may carry photographs and post-cards! When I first came to 
Conflans, camouflaged German helmets were a prize so rare as to 
be much sought after by the souvenir enthusiast; but now cam- 
ouflaged helmets may be had for the asking; an enterprising bugler 
possessed of a knack with a paint-brush has gone into the business 
of camouflaging them while you wait. 

Yesterday, after having returned from Verdun, I noticed a post- 
card in a Jarny shop. It showed a black cat and a white cat sil- 
houetted against the moon, perched on the skeleton beams of a 
half-demolished house, peering disconsolately about them. Under- 
neath the sentence ran; Oil est-il le toil de nos amours? Where is 
the roof of our love? Could any nation but the French thus make 
light of such tragedy? 

Paris, April 21. 

I am on my way home at last. I am waiting here for my sailing. 
This time I am really going all the way through. Now that I am 
on the brink of the retour au civil, as the French say, it seems very 
odd. For eighteen months I haven't worn white gloves, or silk 
stockings, or a veil, no, nor even powdered my nose. And the 
worst of it is, these things don't seem to matter any more. Even a 
uniform, and a homely uniform at that, has tremendous advan- 
tages as part of a working scheme of life. As one girl remarked; 

"You don't have to spend any time thinking: Shall I put on the 



PIONEERS, M.P.S AND OTHERS 263 

pink or the blue tonight? The only question is, Do I or do I not 
need a clean collar? " 

Somehow I feel a little unfitted to go back to a civilian existence 
once more. The same feeling one finds expressed continually among 
the boys. 

"When I get back home, if I see a line anywhere I'll go and stand 
in it just from force of habit," remarked one boy, grinning ruefully. 

But most often this feeling takes the form of a pathetic and 
wistful fear. 

"I'm afraid I'll shock Mother when I get home." 

"They won't know what to make of us, back home, the way 
we'll behave." 

"I reckon I've forgotten how to act civilized." 

And over and again they confess to a shame-faced apprehension 
lest they should unguardedly relapse into the language of the army 
and so frighten their women folk! 

A famous French surgeon confided to my friend, the English 
Lady: 

"In that first year of the war when we were allowed no permis- 
sions we became like savages. The first time that I returned home 
I was afraid. I was afraid all the while, afraid before my wife, be- 
fore my children, — afraid that I would act the beast." 

If by coming to France, we women who have had this privilege 
have discovered the American doughboy, the American doughboy, 
by coming to France, has discovered America. I don't know who 
first said; "After I get back, if the Statue of Liberty ever wants 
to see my face again, she'll have to turn around," but whoever did, 
uttered a sentiment which has been echoed and re-echoed all over 
France. The doughboy has been to Paris, "the City of Light," 
he has amused himself in the playgrounds of princes along the 
Riviera, he has visited the chateaux and palaces of kings and 
queens. And though he admits it is all mighty fine, in the face of 
everything he holds staunchly to his declaration of loyalty; "I'll 
tell the world the little old U. S. A. is good enough for me!" 

At times perhaps his patriotic enthusiasm has outweighed his 



264 CONFLANS 

manners. Again and again a French villager, evidently echoing 
some doughboy's dissertation, has asked me a little wistfully; 

"America bon, goode! France pas boil, no goode! Hein?" 

"Anyway the war has done one good thing," I used to say to the 
lads in the canteens," it has taught you to appreciate your homes." 

"I used to want to get away from home," confided one boy to 
me, "but when I get back there again I'm just going to tie myself 
so tight to Mother's apron-strings that she'll never get the knot 
undone." 

"Say, when I get back," declared another lad as he helped me 
wipe the dishes, "my mother's going to find I'm just the best little 
K. P. she ever knew." 

"When I get home, I'm going to lock myself in the house and 
then I'm going to lose the key and stay right there for a month," 
announced another. 

"Who's in your house? " 

"Just Mother. She's good enough for me." 

Sometimes I have thought that three things have stood as con- 
crete symbols of all that was desirable to the American boy through 
his ordeal over here: a dollar-bill, the Statue of Liberty, his 
mother's face. And only a shade less touching than the dough- 
boy's realization of all that is implied by "Mother;" is his attitude 
of chivalrous idealism toward the American girl. Once I ventured 
to say something in praise of the women of France. 

"But they're not as fine as our girls!" came the instant jealous 
rejoinder. 

"No Mademoiselles jranqaises for me, thank you. I've got a 
little girl of my own back home!" 

"Our American girls, they're as different from these French 
girls," declared a tall Virginian, "as day is from night!" 

"I've laid off of lovin' while I've been over here," confided one 
little engineer, "but, oh boy! my girl's goin' to get an awful 
huggin' when I get home! " 

The most pitiful and hopeless cases that I have seen over here 
were boys who had taken to drink because their girls at home had 



PIONEERS, M.P.S AND OTHERS 265 

proved inconstant. "That man never touched a drop," confided 
the buddy of one of these to me," until he got that letter from his 
girl telling him that she was married to a slacker." 

Not that the doughboy's conduct has always been above re- 
proach. "Single men in barracks," as Kipling once remarked, 
"don't grow into plaster saints;" and he has been sorely tempted. 
But in his heart he has kept an ideal. It has stood between him 
and utter darkness. In this ideal he has put all his faith. If he 
loses it, he loses everything. Those women back home, I wonder, 
do they really understand? 



THE TURN OF THE TIDE 

Fully illustrated with original maps and sketches 

\ By Lieut-Col. JENNINGS C. WISE, author of " The Long Arm of 
Lee," " Gunnery," " Empire and Armament,".etc, etg. $2.00 

To what extent were the great German reverses of the summer of 
1918 due to American military prowess? What were Cantigny and 
Chateau-Thierry from the military standpoint? And how much help 
did Foch get from the Americans at the Second Marne? Such are 
the questions to answer which Colonel Wise has written the " Turn of 
the Tide." Fresh from France and the Historical Section of the 
General Staff at Chaumont, Colonel Wise is the first writer to return to 
this country fully equipped to discuss with authority our share in the 
war. from the point of view of a battalion commander who saw much 
action and as an Army Historian. 

FIRST REFLECTIONS ON THE 
CAMPAIGN OF 1918 

By R. M. JOHNSTON, author of " The French Revolution," "Leading 
American Soldiers," " Napoleon," etc, $1.50. 

In undertaking to offer constructive criticism of our combat army 
in France, Major Johnston does not speak without authority. He was 
attached to the General Staff at Pershing's Headquarters for twelve 
months or more. During this period he made a number of intimate 
visits to the active fronts, and was also special envoy to Paris and 
London on one occasion. Thus he was able to get a perspective on the 
activities of our war machine without being detached from it and 
without a sacrifice of the detailed knowledge which comes from per- 
sonal contact. He sees the war whole and retains an unusual breadth 
of point of view. 

" SIMSADUS-LONDON " 

AT U. S. NAVAL HEADQUARTERS ABROAD 

By J. L. LEIGHTON. With numerous illustrations from actual photo- 
graphs, and picture jacket. $4.00. 

The facts and information offered in this book have a most opportune 
interest as they throw light on the Naval affairs now receiving so much 
public and official attention. The author's close personal contact with 
conditions at the various Naval bases, his relations with the staff in 
London and his active service on the ships of which he writes, vouch 
for the authenticity of his work. 

ARMY MENTAL TESTS 

By CLARENCE S. YOAKUM and ROBERT M, YERKES, of the 
National Research Council. Illustrated. $i-SO. 

Authorized by the War Department, this book provides for business 
men an account of a great achievement in scientific management whereby 
the United States, employing suddenly four million soldiers, found the 
right men for the right places. 



HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

19 W. 44 St. (II 'ao) NEW YORK 



FIRECRACKER JANE 

By Alice Calhoun Haines, author of " The Luck of the 
Dudley Grahams," " Cock-a-doodle Hill," "Partners for 
Fair." $1.50 

Firecracker Jane is the motherless, lovable, red-haired 
daughter of an American cavalry officer, and has grown up 
with her father and " S. O. S.," a younger officer, for her 
" pals." Stung by what she thinks is her father's indifference, 
she elopes with Riccardo, her Mexican cousin, and is plunged 
into the midst of the Mexican chaos of three years ago. 
Follows then a series of adventures which culminate in her 
capture by Valdes, the Lion of the North, a brutal revolution- 
ary leader. Her escape, and the manner in which the love 
tangle is unraveled after war with Germany began, provide 
a happy ending. 

The New York Evening Sun: "Lives up to its title, much strenu- 
ous adventure." 

San Francisco Bulletin: "Thrilling . . . calculated to stir the 
blood of the most jaded fiction reader." 

THE CHINESE PUZZLE 

By Marion Bower and Leon M. Lion. 

The characters, vitally drawn, are gathered at a great 
English country house, and include, in the group of brilliant 
worldlings, a Chinese Ambassador, wise, loyal, and finally — ? 
There is a secret treaty, crime, intrigue and sparkling talk. 
$1.60. 

New York Times: " That all too rare literary product, an absorb- 
ing mystery tale." 

THE HAPPY YEARS 

By Inez Haynes Irwin. The third of the " Phoebe and 
Ernest" Series. $1.60. 

The author's response to the request that she tell what 
happened to Phoebe and Ernest when they grew up. We here 
see each of them married, with children of their own, and with 
delightful friends, and perhaps the happiest of all are 
grandfather and grandmother Martin. The life of them all is 
rich with responsibility, friendship, love, sorrow and happi- 
ness. 

New York Evening Post: " Has as much humor, truth, and appeal- 
ing warmth as any of its predecessors." 

Boston Evening Transcript: "What marks Mrs. Irwin's work is 
her ability to catch the mood of the average American." 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS (vi '19) NEW YORK 



THE LIGHT HEART 

By Maurice Hewlett. $2.00. 

Hewlett has never done anything more brilliant than 
this northern story of adventure in which the epic starkness 
of the plot, drawn from the Iceland sagas, is softened by the 
humanity of a gentler day. The result is a surprising com- 
bination of thrilling narrative and delicate characterization, 
seldom to be matched in literature. 

THE BLACK KNIGHT 

By Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick and Crosbie Garstin. $2.00. 

A young Englishman is involved in the financial ruin and 
disgrace of his father, and emigrates to Western Canada. 
At first a penniless laborer, he eventually makes a fortune, 
after many humorous adventures strongly reminiscent of 
Owen Wister's " Virginian." Finally he returns to Paris, 
where he finds the girl of his choice in the clutches of schem- 
ing relatives, and then . A fascinating up-to-date romance. 

TRUE LOVE 

By Allan Monkhouse, Literary Editor of the Manchester 
Guardian. $1.75. 

This novel deals with the spiritual struggles of a young 
playwright, torn between his love for a woman and his love 
of country at one of the great moments of the world's history. 
No more gallant struggle was ever made, and Monkhouse's 
handling of it is worthy of a high place in contemporary 
fiction. The picture given of the dramatic and literary life in 
Manchester is of particular interest. 

CAPE CURREY 

By Rene Juta. $1.75. 

This remarkable historical novel, which is also a first novel, 
tells one of the strangest stories which has seen the light, even 
in these wonder-loving days. Many of the characters have 
descendants playing their parts now on the British imperial 
stage.^ But the strange figure of Dr. James Barry has only 
old wives' tales and this novel for memorial. The mysterious 
garden is likewise no fiction, Sir Charles Somerset being 
credited with the foundation of the first of its kind in the 
Cape Province. 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

19 W. 44TH St. (iii '20) NEW YORK 




Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proces 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: 2001 

PreservationTechnologie 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATIO 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066 
(724)779-2111 

in 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



007 690 812 6 



